Considering the thought and policies of Mao Tse-tung over “the Mao era”(1949–1976),we could find many brilliant themes. First, it is a period animated by the notion of “permanent revolution.” This theory of permanent revolution was not clearly set forth as part of “Mao Tse-tung Thought” until 1958, but the essential components of were present from the outset—an impatience with history that expressed itself in an ambivalent attitude toward the Marxist assumption that socialism presupposed capitalism; a burning determination to pass through the Marxian-defined "stages" of history in the most rapid possible fashion; The latter notion was to find its most extreme expression in Mao's celebration of the alleged Chinese virtues of being “poor and blank.”( Meisner 2001)
Meisner pointed that Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of the post-revolutionary Mao Tse-tung was his historically unique attempt to reconcile the means of modern economic development with the ends of socialism. Rejecting the inherited Stalinist orthodoxy that the combination of rapid industrialization with state ownership of the means of production would more or less automatically guarantee ever higher stages of socialism and eventually communism, Mao emphasized that the continuous socialist transformation of human beings and their social relations was essential if the process of modern economic development were to have a socialist outcome. This social radicalism was responsible, in part, for the adventures of the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution—and Mao Tse-tung must bear the historical and moral responsibility for the enormous toll of death and suffering that resulted from these extraordinary events, however unintended those results may have been. But Maoist social radicalism also served to forestall the fully Stalinist institutionalization of the post-revolutionary order in China and perhaps served to keep alive, among some, the hope for the eventual realization of the ultimate socialist goals that the revolution promised. It certainly kept the post-revolutionary order in flux, providing Mao's successors, including Deng Xiaoping, with considerable flexibility for charting a new course of development.(Meisner 2001)
The actual historical record of the era suggests that Mao was more successful as an economic modernizer than as a builder of socialism. Over the Mao era (1949–1976), China significantly changed from a primarily agrarian nation to a relatively industrialized one, the ratio of the value of industrial production to total production increasing from 30 to 72 percent. From 1952 (when industrial output was restored to its highest prewar levels) until the close of the Mao era, Chinese industry grew at an average annual rate of 11 percent, the most rapid pace of industrialization achieved by any major nation (developed or developing) during that time. Indeed, Maoist industrialization, however crude the process was in many respects, compares favorably with comparable decades in the industrialization of Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union, hitherto generally regarded as the three most successful cases of modernization among major “latecomers” on the world industrial scene. It is during the Mao era as the time when the basic foundations for China's modern industrialism were laid. (Meisner2001)
Meisner believed that Mao's status as a modernizer is his reputation rather than as the creator of a socialist society. “ For what is most strikingly absent in both Maoist theory and practice is the elemental Marxist principle that socialism must be a system whereby the immediate producers themselves democratically control the products and conditions of their labor. In the Maoist system, by contrast, the control of labor and its fruits was left in the hands of an ever larger and more alien bureaucratic apparatus. Mao, to be sure, repeatedly conducted anti-bureaucratic campaigns, and there is no reason to doubt the genuineness of his antipathy to bureaucracy. But from those campaigns, he time and again failed to devise any viable means of popular democratic control over the powerful bureaucratic apparatus over which he uneasily presided. And if Mao broke, at least in some significant ways, with the Stalinist strategy of socioeconomic development, in the political realm the Maoist regime retained essentially Stalinist methods of bureaucratic rule and consistently suppressed all forms of intellectual and political dissent in Stalinist fashion. The Mao era was thus marked by a deep incongruity between its progressive socioeconomic accomplishments and its retrogressive political features, an incongruity that precluded any genuine socialist reorganization of Chinese society.”(Meisner2001)
The Mao era in the history of the People's Republic was one of the most unstable and controversial periods in modern world history. Based on Meisner’s view,Mao will be considered as” modern China's greatest nationalist, the leader of a revolution whose enduring achievement was to bring national unification and independence to China—after a century of repeated internal political failures and grave external impingements.” Mao will also be seen as “ a great modernizer who, despite monumental post-revolutionary blunders, presided over the initial modern industrial transformation of one of the world's most economically backward lands, inaugurating a lengthy process destined eventually to make China a great world power.” He was a nationalist modernizer rather than a pioneer of socialism modernizer.(Meisner 2001)
Mao’s contributions in different aspects
Sociologist Yu Ping said Mao's great contribution to the development of China could never be denied, and that his military philosophy and literary talents still influenced Chinese society.(Yu 2003)He was viewed as the philosopher, Marxist, soldier, political leader, teacher, economist, patriot ,and innovator of China.
As a Marxist: Mao’s Marxism was of the Leninist school, but it was modified by contact with Chinese realities, and enriched by a philosophical dimension which to some extent paralleled the thought of Marx, and to some extent diverged from it. Mao was likewise wholly Leninist in his view that a “proletarian” dictatorship, led by the Party, could guide and control the evolution of a largely pre-capitalist society, through a series of transitional stages, to lay the foundations for socialism and then proceed to build socialism and communism. He was a Marxist is certain ,for he drew extensively on both Marx and Lenin, whatever the other elements that went into the making of his thought. “Did he make a contribution to Marxism?”----it depends on the answer we may give to another question----Does a system of thought as important and as influential as Marxism belong to its author, or to history?---if the former, Mao can not be regarded as having contributed to the development of Marxism, for there is little doubt that Marx would have rejected him as a disciple. If, Marxism is what those who seed to follow Marx make of it in every era, then Mao must be counted among the major Marxist theoreticians of our own day.
Mao’s Marxism it is not simple a method but something which, though open and undogmatic, was already more like a system.
As a political leader:His major objective was to commit his people and succeeding generations to continue the quest for a wealthy, powerful, socialist China. He summarized his goals on several occasions, including this one in 1954:
Our general task is to unite the people of the whole country, win the support of all international friends, fight for building a great socialist country, and fight for defending international peace and developing the progressive undertaking of mankind…We should be prepared to build within the period of a number of five year plans our country, which presently is economically and culturally backward, into a great industrialized nation with a high degree of modern culture.
Mao’s career can be written in terms of the successive cleavages he used in pursuit of his quest(1)from 1935 to 1945,between the entire Chinese people and the Japanese invaders;(2)from1945 to 1953,between the dispossessed and deprived within China(the rural and the urban poor)and the privileged;(3)from 1954 to 1965,between the Chinese eager to build a new society and the vestige groups who had enjoyed privilege in pre-1949 China(4)from 1965 to his death in 1976,between the less privileged sectors under the new system and the emerging new ruling bureaucratic class in China. He urged the the Hunan peasants against the landlords and local warlords in preparation for the Northern Expedition in 1926;he called for national resistance to the Japanese invasion, through his pursuit of land reform in the late 1940s and early 1950s; his campaign against remnant ‘capitalist’ and ‘rightists’in1957-1958 which played a crucial role in establishing the mood for the Great Leap and ending with the arousal of youth to attack the bureaucracy during the Cultural Revolution.
1949-1955,it is the time to establish the New Order-----land reform, the resist-America aid-Korea campaign, “Three-Anti, Five-Anti” campaigns, the patriotic health campaign, the local election campaign and the related national census, the campaign for the new marriage law and numerous others. This was an era of consolidating power and creating viable institutions.(Wilson 1977:P112)
1955-1959,Mao in command. An increasing state budget yielded sufficient revenues to undertake new economic development and welfare programmes…The bureaucracies were in place, centralized planning got underway and a state statistical network was grinding out reliable data on which Mao’s associates and their bureaucratic subordinates made informed decisions .To bar over reliance on bureaucratic modes of policy implementation, Mao balanced the enhanced strength of the bureaucracies by continually launching campaigns in various realms.
1960-1965,weakened Time. The failure of the Great Leap, the creation of viable local institutions and the emergence of an entrenched bureaucracy rather swiftly altered the political landscape. Mao’s associated fromYenan days began to move away from him---the ties between Mao hand his policy-specifiers weakened while the ties between them and the bureaucratic arenas became stronger. The fact is Mao’s power was being curtailed through the emergence of a stable society.
1966-1969,the Cultural Revolution. Mao’s intention Mao had a rational but audacious purpose: no firm answer, just left random scattered remarks and there are arguments on whether Mao wanted it to be a real revolution or it was just a mere purge? The writer believes Mao did intend it to be a real revolutionary movement-----He spoke of CCP had degenerated into a new ruling class as a real future possibility. He also forced his fellow leaders to accept the 16 points of 8,8 1966.he was the supreme leader in China and it was not difficult for him to purge some leaders such as Liu Deng in Party.
His measures: First, Purge many policy-making associates and the elimination of several policy-specifying bodies within Party. Second, Tap the tensions between generations and encourage movements of the Red Guards. Third, use the Red Guard to disrupt bureaucratic routine and drag the ‘corrupt’ officer into the streets. Forth, use the army to undertake the necessary unifying and coordinating functions previously performed by the Party and government. Fifth, created new organizations such as the democratic local communities to urge the young carders who are loyal to Mao to take power .
Mao failed to approximate his goal. The Red Guard escaped his control and led the whole country to chaos. The power struggle happened in each level of the hierarchy and the whole country approached in a state of Civil War.
For Mao, the keys to power were knowledge and popular support derived from the people’s faith in the essential goodness and virtue of their rulers:
He wrote in ‘On Protracted War’ May 1938:The army must become one with the people so that they see it as their own army. Such an army will be invincible.
In ‘On Coalition Government’ April 1945,he argued that every comrade must be helped to understand that as long as we rely on the people, believe firmly in the inexhaustible creative power of the masses and hence trust and identify ourselves with them, we can surmount any difficulty, and no enemy can crush us while we can crush any enemy.
Mao as a soldier :Mao Tse-tung was the first among the great Marxist leaders to develop a comprehensive and complete Marxist military line and system of thought on military affairs. Mao led the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese people and the armed forces under the Communist Party’s leadership in the different war eras -----against the warlords, against the reactionary regime of Chiang Kai-shek, then in the united front against Japan in the anti-Japanese war, and at last in the war of liberation against Chiang Kai-shek ,which resulted in the liberation of China in 1949.
His development of Marxism-Leninism with regard to warfare was closely linked with the character of the Chinese revolution.(Avakian1979:.P41)
It was on the basis that correctly analyze the character of Chinese society of the Chinese revolution in general that Mao developed the strategy of establishing the base areas, waging protracted war to surround the cities from the countryside and finally capture the cities and win nationwide political power, the correct road on which Mao led the Chinese masses in waging the successful revolutionary struggle in China.(Avakian 1979:P43)
In Jacques Guillermaz’s article the writer thinks that Mao was imbued with the spirit of rebellion at a very early stage .All Chinese schoolchildren of his age read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Water Margin. He was deeply influenced and sought in the these books models for his youthful ambitions. During the Northern Expedition(1926-1927),he considered the conquest of power as attainable primarily through widespread peasant uprisings.
1927,the break of KMT and CCP. The CCP changed its urban and working class character to become a rural and peasant Party. The starting point of Mao’s military experience is the Autumn Harvest Uprising in September 1927.It failed because it is badly prepared and organized Then Mao reassembled the remaining handful of insurgents at the foot of the Chingkangshan. He had only a few hundred poorly armed men but then the Chingkangshan become the capital that he was to build the military fortune of his Party.
1928,the two texts “Why is it that Red Political Power Can Exist in China?”(5 October,1928) and “Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains” demonstrated the remarkable extent to which Mao had already grasped and assimilated the essential rules of warfare, adapting them in the process to local geo-political and military conditions. The chief characteristics of his strategy were to create “ base areas,” to develop the expansion of regular armies, and to work with and organize the local populations.(Avakian 1979:P119) This mobile and flexible tactic was then summarized in the “16 character” formula: “The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.”(Avakian 1979:P135)
Mao was the first to raise his experience to the level of theory. The theory inspired the Red Army in its early years and its extension to national application during the Sino-Japanese War(1937-45) and during the Third Civil War(1946-49)established it permanently.(Avakian 1979:P120)
Mao’s mistakes
“It is not that Mao committed no mistakes. Those who dream of revolution and strive for this in revolutionary struggles are liable to commit mistakes. Those who never go in for struggles can of course claim that they never committed mistakes. Marx, Engels, Lenin – everyone of them made mistakes. But their mistakes were the mistakes of great revolutionaries. Even through their mistakes they succeeded in carrying forward the revolutionary consciousness of people. Mao’s mistakes should also be judged from this viewpoint only.” ( Mishra,1993)
Even though Mao achieved a great deal in his lifetime, he had made numerous mistakes as well:
On Economy,there were two classes of mistakes made under Mao. The first deals with the poor policy choices made concerning the administration of the planned economy that resulted in deteriorating economic conditions before 1978. The second class of errors deals with the philosophical choice to continue with the planned economy rather than create a market driven one.
By 1978 China’s centrally planned economy was performing poorly, and much of the early reforms (1978 -- 84) dealt with correcting the first class of mistakes. Such reforms as decreased price restrictions and decentralization in the agricultural sector, as well as more aggressive export promotion aimed more at solving the problems of the central planned economy than replacing it. The same can be said for many of the reforms before 1992;which brought about the two tier pricing system and opened up specific
regions for international trade. All of these policies, and the resulting economic growth, were the result of correcting the first class of mistakes made under Mao involving the poorly run economy. These succeeded because they allowed the still largely centralized economy to function more efficiently.
Policy since 1992 in China has addressed the more fundamental mistake made under Mao; perpetuating a centrally planned economy. This larger shift in ideology, more than any individual reform, is the reason that China has had great success in the reform process.( )
His belief in “destruction before construction” was the primary reason for his mistakes on Politics(Karnow 1972:P200). One of the major mistakes that he made was the Great Leap Forward, which was the “biggest and most ambitious experiment in human mobilization” in history, despite the fact that it lasted less than one year (Karnow 1972:P92). Mao’s objective was to lift China to Britain’s level of industrial production within a fifteen-year period (Karnow 1972:P93). One of the movement’s purposes was to weed out the capitalists and bourgeoisie (Karnow 1972:P97). According to some historians, Mao's crime during this period was that he had ample warning in early 1959 that the Great Leap Forward was creating food shortages, but he did not remedy the situation.The iron-and-steel drive, which transformed millions of cooking pots and other utensils into useless slag, drew labor from the fields, leaving many crops unharvested. It began in the fall of 1958 with the organization of over half a billion peasants into 24,000 “people’s communes,” while all private property was confiscated. The peasants were transformed into a large labor force that worked all day, farming and making products such as steel in backyard furnaces (Karnow 1972:P92). Each of the peasants was promised equal food, clothing, and shelter according to socialist ideals (Karnow 1972:P96).
The movement ended in the spring of 1959, less than a year after it began, but it led severe damage (Karnow 1972:P102). It had put to a complete halt the economic prosperity that the Communists had brought about during their first eight years of power (Karnow 1972:P103). Its result was the great famine in which at least 25-35 million people died .The famine lasted for two years. Malnutrition and diseases, such as tuberculosis, hepatitis, and edema, spread rapidly (Karnow 1972:P 103-104). In one of China’s richest provinces, Guangdong, there was no meat or fish, and there were hardly any vegetables and even rice. The number of food parcels sent from Hong Kong into Guangdong for families rose from about one million in 1959 to almost twelve million by 1961. Many were forced to eat grass, cornstalks, and other vegetation; even authorities recommended things such as “nonpoisonous, highly nutritious plankton” called “red worm” for sources of protein (Karnow 1972:P105). Crime increased dramatically; Some were so desperate that they deliberately got arrested in hope of being fed in jail (Karnow 1972:P106). Even soldiers in the People’s Liberation Army publicly slandered the government that they were supposed to fight for, blaming it for the food shortages that were affecting many of their own families (Karnow 1972:P108). .
Mao’s second major mistake was The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which Mao hoped to introduce a new stage in the development of socialist revolution in China and purged the capitalists factors in Party. It lasted from 1966-1976.. In the Cultural Revolution, Mao criticized the ideas of the bourgeoisie, especially in art and literature, which were vital elements in Mao’s “spiritual” tactic towards his idea of revolution (Karnow 1972:P158-159). During the revolution, Mao formed the Red Guards, an organization of young activists, to protest against Chinese institutes of education (Karnow 1972:P170).
The greatest loss of life came in the Great Famine, a result of Mao's misguided industrialization effort called the Great Leap Forward. The Chinese government over the years has given varying estimates of deaths and at one time blamed them on the weather. For years many scholars said 20 million died. But Judith Bannister, a demographer at the U.S. Census Bureau, has put the toll at about 30 million. Using material contributed by China's State Statistical Bureau as well as China's State Family
Planning Commission, she and other demographers employed complicated formulas involving birth rates before and after the period to reach their conclusion. An even higher figure -- 43 million -- is now gaining some academic currency. Chen Yizi, a former Chinese official now at Princeton University's Center for Modern China, spent years researching the subject in China. He conducted a county-by-county review of deaths in five provinces and, by extrapolation, arrived at 43 million. A research center in Shanghai recently reached the same figure for the number of famine deaths.(Southerland 1994)
The Cultural Revolution, like the Great Leap Forward, resulted in much destruction. There was no economic progress made. Assessing the figure presents problems; in many places, fighting among Red Guard factions erupted and government and police authority collapsed. Many were tortured or driven to suicide. There have been wild fluctuations on death estimates -- from hundreds of thousands to 20 million.. Therefore, Mao’s actions caused much damage to China and its people towards the later part of his life. (Pong 2001)
Conclusion
In most Chinese view, Mao Tse-tung was an great leader .He transformed China from a weak, dependent semi-colony country into a strong, independent Republic country of the twentieth century. Although he made mistakes, these could not cover his contributions to China.
It is definitely necessary for many people nowadays to evaluate Mao. But it is still not the time to say the final words on the comprehensive evaluation of Mao. The Soviet communist party had made their own assessment of Stalin but Marxists-Leninists of the world had rejected that. Similarly, the CCP’s evaluation of Mao could not be considered as the last word as well. CCP’s evaluation is only a part of any comprehensive evaluation of Mao. But Mao didn’t belong just to China, or just belong to Communism countries. He belongs to the whole world. Marxists-Leninists of the world will evaluate him and for that history has to wait for some more time.
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![It is true that Comrade Mao Tse-tung made gross mistakes during the 'Cultural Revolution', but his contributions to the Chinese revolution far outweigh his mistakes.'[Resolution on some questions in CCP history, CCP Central Committee, June 1981]Discuss](https://mbt-essays-prod-public.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/93459/listing/93459_1.jpg)
