China and Communism

[Laughingasylum]

I know rather little about China under Mao but I know from other people everything was run by Mao and the party, no workers control of anything and the military used to keep people in place.
Basically Stalinist with the leader worship, military first, ect. But is there anything else you guys could add?
Also, what do you guys know of the Chinese Communist party in 1920?
Thanks!

[Blake's Baby]

You're going to get a lot of disagreement from people on here about your basic premise, to the point of being accused of flaming and tendency-baiting I expect. There are Maoists and Stalinists here that will, I suspect, take great offence to what you've said.

The CCP in the 1920s was, like the other CPs, brought closely into line with Moscow's foreign policy aims. Alliance was sought with the KMT (in line with the notion that they were 'progressive nationalists', a Leninist idiociy in my opinion) to the extent that, while the Chinese working class who had launched the revolt known as the Shanghai Commune was being massacred by the KMT in 1927, Mao was busy writing reports on agriculture for the same KMT government.

For some of us, the suppression on the Shanghai Commune marks the end of the revolutionary wave that swept round the world following the revolution in Russia. Nothing that happened in China in successive years had anything to do with the world revolution, as there was no world revolution left. It was all the triumph of the counter-revolution and in terms of whether Sun Yat Sen or Mao Zedong was in control, merely a faction-fight among representatives of different sections of the Chinese bourgeoisie.

[Laughingasylum]

I don't mean to upset people but views clash so would be good to hear their views and learn to counter pose them. From I've seen debates here are often more civilized than other places.

[Sixiang]

I know rather little about China under Mao but I know from other people everything was run by Mao and the party, no workers control of anything and the military used to keep people in place.
Basically Stalinist with the leader worship, military first, ect. But is there anything else you guys could add?

The bold section in your post is key to understanding why the rest of what you say in this post is so disagreeable. I suggest that you do some informative reading on the history of the PRC before you jump to such negative and uninformed judgments. Mao Zedong himself said that we should not make any judgments about something before we engage in research and discussion of it.

I will suggest to you the following literature to help you get a better informed understanding of the era:

A very brief yet scholarly and enjoyable history of twentieth century China mixed in with Mao's biography:
- Karl, Rebecca E. Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World: A Concise History. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. (http://www.amazon.com/Mao-Zedong-China-Twentieth-Century-World/dp/0822347954/ref=pd_sim_b_34?ie=UTF8&refRID=1H9PNXS94PEH0JW71WX3)

What I believe to be the single most thorough and balanced description of Mao's thought based on decades of scholarship and research:
- Schram, Stuart. The Thought of Mao Tse-tung. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. (http://www.amazon.com/Thought-Tse-Tung-Contemporary-Institute-Publications/dp/0521310628)

If you want a longer, more detailed history of the PRC:
- Meisner, Maurice. Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic. 3rd edition. Free Press, 1999. (http://www.amazon.com/Maos-China-After-History-Republic/dp/0684856352/ref=pd_sim_b_1/189-3737998-2026162?ie=UTF8&refRID=1S0MA4Z21TPC7BE7H2YH)


Also, what do you guys know of the Chinese Communist party in 1920?
In 1920? It did not even exist yet because it was not created until 1921. If you meant the decade of the 1920s, it was founded in 1921 by a group of some 50 intellectuals and activists in Shanghai. They quickly got to work on trying to organize separate communist trade unions in Chinese factories and mines. Many of the party's membership at this time were very active in workers' strikes and union activity as well as anti-imperialist activities such as boycotting Japanese goods and holding anti-Japanese imperialism demonstrations. In 1923, the CCP formed a united front with the Guomin Dang, the Chinese nationalist party led by Sun Zhongshan, a Chinese revolutionary nationalist and socialist republican who was active in the overthrow of the last Chinese monarchical dynasty. Under the United Front, CCP members joined the GMD and were mostly involved in propaganda and worker organizing. Mao was the first CCP member to become a peasant organizer, realizing the revolutionary potential of the mass peasantry movement in China. By 1926, the CCP had hundreds of thousands of members and a large military wing working jointly with the nationalist National Revolutionary Army in order to try to unify the country and put an end to the rampant problem of warlordism (which you can read about here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warlord_Era). In 1927, with most of the country unified, the new GMD leader, General Jiang Jieshi, launched his infamous "White Terror" or "Shanghai Massacre" of Shanghai workers, union organizers, and CCP members. The part members and union organizers who were not executed managed to escape into the Chinese countryside or find solace in the mostly leftist city of Wuhan. It was at this point that Mao formed his 500-person army and they set up a base on top of a mountain in one of the poorest and most desolate areas of China. There were basically two major factions of the party at this time: those rallied behind the military wing led by Mao and Zhu De, and the Shanghai faction of party leaders who quickly ousted party chairman Chen Duxiu from office for his blind implementation of disastrous Soviet united front policy dictates. It was not until 1928 or 1929 (I forget which specifically) that Moscow agreed with Mao's colleagues that the CCP should have kept its military separate from the GMD and should have maintained more independence and security from the GMD. On and off, throughout 1927-1949, the Chinese civil war raged between the nationalists and communists along with a Japanese invasion from 1937-1945.


You're going to get a lot of disagreement from people on here about your basic premise, to the point of being accused of flaming and tendency-baiting I expect. There are Maoists and Stalinists here that will, I suspect, take great offence to what you've said.
Indeed.


The CCP in the 1920s was, like the other CPs, brought closely into line with Moscow's foreign policy aims. Alliance was sought with the KMT (in line with the notion that they were 'progressive nationalists', a Leninist idiociy in my opinion) to the extent that, while the Chinese working class who had launched the revolt known as the Shanghai Commune was being massacred by the KMT in 1927, Mao was busy writing reports on agriculture for the same KMT government.
There were genuine leftists in the GMD who were friendly with and supportive of the CCP and highly opposed to Jiang's right-wing faction of the GMD, which ended up taking over and leading the party. Many of these left-wing GMD members ended up supporting the establishment of the PRC and became high-ranking PRC ministers, intellectuals, and officials.


For some of us, the suppression on the Shanghai Commune marks the end of the revolutionary wave that swept round the world following the revolution in Russia. Nothing that happened in China in successive years had anything to do with the world revolution, as there was no world revolution left. It was all the triumph of the counter-revolution and in terms of whether Sun Yat Sen or Mao Zedong was in control, merely a faction-fight among representatives of different sections of the Chinese bourgeoisie.
Why do you say Mao was a representative of the Chinese bourgeoisie? He was of peasant background and - aside from managing an anarchist book swap for a few years in the later 1910s - was only an intellectual, military commander, or party/government official for the rest of his life.

[Blake's Baby]

So what? Engels was bourgeois, does that mean he can't be a communist? Mao was a peasant, does that mean he can't act in the interests of Chinese capitalism?

[BIXX]

I don't mean to upset people but views clash so would be good to hear their views and learn to counter pose them. From I've seen debates here are often more civilized than other places.


http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/03/16/sadyzeny.jpg

All jokes aside, I think the debates here are done very nicely for the most part, as most of them don't end in death threats.