Mao Zedong Thought

 

By Wang Fanxi

Edited, translated, and with an introduction by Gregor Benton

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

In recent years, the nation of China has captured the imagination of the world. Back in the 19th century, literally tens of millions of Chinese starved to death. The Manchu Qing Dynasty ruled China for about 200 years. During that time, the Manchu royal family ordered the majority of the male population to wear pigtails and shave the front of their heads. Millions of Chinese women had their feet bound so tightly that their bones would break.

Today China has already become the manufacturing center of the world. Port cities of China continually load supertankers with containers to be transported all over the globe. High-speed trains transport passengers faster than jet aircraft over tens of thousands of miles. In three years, China used more concrete than the United States used in over 100 years. This enormous development allowed the capitalist economy in the world to escape the 2008 recession.

On the one hand, many argue that this unparalleled development means that the Chinese government is doing something right. Clearly hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens have seen a significant improvement in their standard of living. 

On the other hand, there are those who argue that China has a repressive government that is intolerant of decent. The Chinese government repression in the 1989 Tiananmen Demonstration, and of the recent Hong Kong demonstrations is clear evidence of this point of view. 

In order to begin to understand China today, I believe we need to go back to look at the emergence of the Chinese Communist Party and its central leader Mao Zedong.

In his book Mao Zedong Thought, Wang Fanxi gave us the background to Mao as well as an analysis of where his ideas came from. Fanxi was uniquely qualified to write this book. He was a member of the Communist Party during the same years as Mao. While he never met Mao, he knew people who worked closely with him. 

As a member of the Chinese Communist Party, Wang Fanxi was one of many members who went to the Soviet Union in 1926 to study revolutionary politics. From that vantage point Wang viewed the defeat of the 1927 Chinese Revolution.

Initially Chen Duxiu was one of the two initial leaders of the CCP. Chen had been forced to leave China because of his criticisms of the Guomindang (Kuomintang) that was the dominant Chinese nationalist organization. Because of this repression, Chen Duxiu became inspired by the Russian Revolution and helped to organize a proletarian party to overturn capitalist relations in China.

However, with the rise of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, that approach was largely abandoned. Because of the example of the Russian Revolution, as well as the support of the Soviet government, that government had a tremendous influence over the CCP.

Stalin had a completely different approach to politics than Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Lenin understood that there would be no fundamental change in tzarist Russia unless the working class took power. Stalin, on the other hand argued that there needed to be a “block of four classes” in China. That block of four classes would consist of workers, peasants, capitalists, and the middle class. 

Because of this perspective, Stalin promoted the idea that the Guomindang was the primary revolutionary organization in China. He coerced the Chinese Communist Party to follow the orders of the Guomindang. As a result, during the 1927 revolution the Guomindang ordered members of the CCP to give up their arms. This led to the massacre of thousands of members of the CCP and the defeat of the 1927 revolution.

Leon Trotsky opposed Stalin’s approach to politics. Trotsky had been the commander of the Red Army that defended the Soviet Union for two- and one-half years from a foreign invasion. Trotsky understood that the Guomindang, headed by Chiang Kai-shek was an enemy to the Chinese people. For those reasons, Trotsky adamantly opposed the perspective of following the orders of the Guomindang. 

Wang Fanxi and Chen Duxiu were among many members of the Chinese Communist Party who supported Leon Trotsky’s approach to the 1927 revolution. Although Trotsky’s perspective proved to be correct, the leadership of the CCP continued to support Stalin and blamed Chen Duxiu for the disaster and defeat of the 1927 revolution. Both Wang Fanxi and Chen Duxiu would serve time in prisons run by the Guomindang in the 1930s.

Mao Zedong Thought

Wang Fanxi began his analysis of the thinking of Mao Zedong by looking at Mao’s early years. Because Marxist literature was not available in China for a long time, Mao concentrated his early reading on the Chinese classics. It wasn’t until Mao reached the age of 27 that he began to look at Marxism. Most of the Marxist literature Mao studied were the writings of Joseph Stalin. 

Initially Stalin favored Wang Ming to be the leader of the CCP because of the Wang’s allegiance to his dictates. Although Mao supported the politics of Stalin, he had his own ideas. This independence proved to be crucial to the success of the Chinese Revolution.

Wang Fanxi differentiated between the tactics and the strategy of Mao. Wang conceded that Mao was a brilliant tactician. When the Chinese Communist Party found itself in extremely difficult positions, Mao’s leadership proved to be crucial in allowing the CCP to survive. 

However, Mao argued that his tactical approach should also be viewed as a strategy. In other words, while Marxists argue that a socialist revolution can only happen because of a political party based on the working class, Mao argued that the CCP needed to be based on the peasantry. 

Clearly the CCP found it nearly impossible to continue to operate in the cities because of the repression by the Guomindang. We can also say that during the Cuban Revolution, revolutionaries also found it nearly impossible to operate in the cities and they based their guerrilla resistance in the mountains.

However, there is a difference between carrying out a struggle in the countryside and changing a strategy to base the movement on the peasantry. Peasants want to farm their own land. Workers work together creating profits for capitalists. 

This is the reason why a worker’s movement can put in place a government that can make human needs more important than profits. Only a workers’ government can eventually convince farmers that collective farming is more efficient than family farming. This is one reason why Marx supported the idea of a proletarian revolution. Mao grew to reject that idea.

Under these conditions, Mao grew to support most of the organizing methods of Stalin. Lenin initiated the idea of “democratic centralism” where members of the Bolshevik Party discussed their political orientation at national gatherings. Then, after a vote was taken to accept a political line, all members were required to support that line. Lenin fully accepted the idea that there would be differences within the party, and that those who had differences would have the right to raise them at national meetings.

On the one hand, there are no cities in China named after Mao. That was a conscious policy of the CCP. However, at the seventh congress of the CCP in 1945, “Mao Zedong Thought” became the guiding principle of the party. This meant that anyone who was critical of Mao was critical of what the party viewed as an absolute truth. 

Then, in the year 1956, this changed. Nakita Khrushchev became the head of the government in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev gave a four-hour speech using 26,000 words to describe all the crimes of Stalin. In fact, Stalin organized to murder the entire leadership of the Russian Revolution. After that speech, the Chinese Communist Party revised their 1945 resolution to state that Marxism-Leninism was its guide to action. However, that change in no way changed the political direction of the party.

Mao advanced his plan of the Great Leap Forward. In many ways this plan was like the forced collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union advanced by Stalin. Millions died because of that disastrous plan. 

Liu Shaoqi was the second most powerful member of the CCP at that time. While Liu supported most of Mao’s policies, he opposed the Great Leap Forward. As a result, Liu replaced Mao as the head of the party and advanced policies that appeared to many to be more rational. Den Xiaoping was a supporter of the politics of Liu Shaoqi. 

Mao didn’t like the fact that he was losing influence and organized the Cultural Revolution. Young people, seeing that their future was very limited, joined with Mao in a campaign aimed at punishing millions who had positions of influence in the country. As a result, the entire educational system in China was destroyed for a time, and millions were forced to work in the countryside.

In what appeared to be a repeat of the Chinese disaster of 1927, the Chinese Communist Party advised their supporters in the Indonesian Communist Party to support the politics of Sukarno. Sukarno headed the Indonesian government in the 1960s. 

That support left the hundreds of thousands of communists in Indonesia defenseless against a military coup led by the military commander, Suharto. As a result, hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of Indonesians died because of a massacre organized by the military. Had the party armed itself and prepared for that coup, clearly a different result might have happened. 

Finally, after China had given military support to the Vietnamese struggle against the US invasion, Mao met with US President Richard Nixon in February of 1972. By December of 1972 Nixon ordered the Air Force to carry out operation Linebacker II. The Air Force then dropped 20,000 pounds of bombs on North Vietnam. That bombing campaign in no way altered the eventual outcome of the war.

After Mao's death the Chinese government ordered the invasion of Vietnam, and supported the genocidal rule of Pol Pot in Cambodia. These were the actions that convinced the US government to begin to reverse its policy towards China.    

Mao on literature and art

One thing I learned from Wang Fanxi’s book was that Mao was a poet. Wang even viewed Mao’s poetry as worth reading and a part of the Chinese literary heritage. 

However, Mao’s poetry reflected the hundreds of years of feudalism in China and not the ideas of a proletarian revolution. Saying that, Mao’s ideas, like Stalin’s were completely different from Lenin’s approach to art and literature.

Lenin wrote favorably about the writings of Leo Tolstoy. Lenin argued that Tolstoy gave a stunning view of life in Tzarist Russia and felt that view was worth reading. However, Lenin also wrote about how Tolstoy was a large landowner, who wrote his novels from that perspective. So, Lenin was about the free expression of art after the revolution, but reserved the right to be critical of that art. 

Mao, on the other hand felt that art needed to follow the dictates of the party. Wang Fanxi felt that this approach created an environment where genuine artistic creativity was impossible.

Why was Mao so popular?

After Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping became the new leader of China. Unlike Khrushchev, Deng made no speech denouncing the crimes of Mao. However, Deng took China in a different direction. While pretending to support the interests of workers and farmers, Deng opened China to massive capitalist investment. 

Marx and Engels argued that they thought proletarian revolution would first erupt in the advanced capitalist nations. They were wrong. Those revolutions erupted in the relatively underdeveloped nations of Russia, China, and Cuba.  

Malcolm X once argued that in the United States there used to be an expression, “You don’t have a Chinamen’s chance.” That expression summarized the hundreds of years of systematic oppression experienced by the large majority of the Chinese population. Malcom argued that after the Chinese Revolution that expression wasn’t used any more.

So, we can argue that in China there was an extreme yearning for liberation. Wang Fanxi, and Chen Duxiu dedicated themselves to the liberation of the of the Chinese people. Mao initially dedicated himself to the liberation of China. Then, largely because of his ardent support of the politics of Joseph Stalin, he allowed his personal ambitions to get in the way of a true liberation of China.

Clearly there will be those who argue that there have been hundreds of millions in China who have recently experienced a significant improvement in their standard of living. Well, there was a significant improvement in the standard of living in the United States between the years 1945 and 1970. Clearly, Marx argued that when there is an upturn in capitalist development, there can also be an improved standard of living for the working class.

After the Second World War, there was a strike wave followed by the titanic events of the civil rights movement. These events were the prime movers in the improved standard of living.

In the past years there have been tens of thousands of strikes in China. Because of the repressive character of the Chinese government, the world has little information about these strikes. However, at one time there were about 5,000 mining deaths per year in China. Today, that number has been reduced to about 300 mining deaths. Miners are among the most militant workers and we might assume that this sharp decline in mining deaths was largely due to job actions by miners.

China and Cuba

When we compare the reality of China and Cuba today, I believe we can also see a profound difference. As I mentioned, there was a clear change in the politics of the Chinese Communist Party after the death of Mao. However, after the death of Fidel Castro there was no significant change in the politics of the Cuban Communist Party.

There has been massive capitalist investment in China. However, the United States maintains an embargo against Cuba. 

China invaded Vietnam and profits from their international investments in their “Belt and Road” initiative. Cuba sent its armed forces to Angola to defend that nation from an invasion by the apartheid government of South Africa. Cuba has also sent its doctors all over the world to treat some of the poorest patients on the planet.

For all these reasons, I believe that while the Chinese Communist Party claims to support the ideas of Marxism, in fact China has become a capitalist state. This is in spite of the fact that in China’s early years, the CCP took significant steps against Chinese capitalism, as well as support for the resistance to the US invasions of Korea and Vietnam. 

Today, the United States government has challenged China because China has become their primary capitalist competitor in the world. Living in the United States means that we need to oppose all those war moves. Allow the Chinese people, as well as the workers of the world to resolve their own problems.

I frankly don’t see how unparalleled growth of China will continue indefinitely. As this growth begins to come to an end, Chinese workers will see how their only road to advancement will be with a government that makes human needs and not profits its only priority. Workers in the world will also begin to see how our class has the same fundamental interests all over the globe.