An essay question, FAO Maoists

[93'perfuck]

Evaluate the extent to which the revolutionary leadership [under Mao] achieved legitimacy during the period 1949-1961.


A friend has been given that as a question for a history essay (at a very elite college may i add), so would any of the far left like to enlighten her (and me)?

[93'perfuck]

*hopeful bump*

[MrCharizma]

In regards to your question comrade 93'perfuck, I searched a bit in the forum and found a few threads for you to link your friends, from this elitist, capitalist college they call a school.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/discussion-china-under-t58122/index.html?t=58122

http://www.revleft.com/vb/anti-mao-t57096/index.html?t=57096

http://www.revleft.com/vb/did-mao-kill-t51556/index.html?t=51556

And this one here is an essay on Mao by another Comrade.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/class-nature-chinese-t120269/index.html

I don't know much at all on Mao, but I hope that these links help your reputation among these friends ;)

[penguinfoot]

It depends largely on how you would go about defining "revolutionary leadership" - on the one hand you could make the question about whether the CPC as a whole was able to establish itself as a legitimate and stable government during the specified period and then you would be able to examine critical periods of resistance to CPC rule, like the waves of elite-led peasant unrest in the immediate aftermath of 1949, the 1957 Shanghai strike wave, and so on, or, alternatively, you could narrow the concept of revolutionary leadership and make it about Mao and his allies within the leadership of the CPC, in which case the essay would be about the extent to which Mao was able to secure support for his policies, against other political actors such as Liu Shaoqi. If the latter, then the best set of academic works to look at would be MacFarquhar's three volumes on the origins of the Cultural Revolution, as they examine in-depth the factional struggles (or lack thereof) during the first decades of the PRC.

[Hiero]

What the hell is legitimate?

Isn't a legitimate leadership just ability to enforce sovereign power over a territory?

[bailey_187]

What the hell is legitimate?

Isn't a legitimate leadership just ability to enforce sovereign power over a territory?

Or it could mean how accepted the government was by the Chinese people