MAO Zedong — Contributions of to Revolutionary Theory and Practice
Summing up Mao’s enormously important contributions to revolutionary thought and practice is no
small task. From the standpoint of revolutionary practice it is hard to believe that the great
Chinese Revolution which overthrew foreign imperialism and Chinese bureaucrat-comprador
capitalism in 1949 could have been successful without him, at least during that era. And it is
virtually impossible to imagine that the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution could have occurred at all without his personal initiation and direction of it.
Mao’s contributions to revolutionary theory lay behind both those great revolutions; in
philosophy and socialist political economy, as well as in revolutionary political and military
strategy. The outline here of Mao’s individual great contributions to Chinese and international
revolutionary theory and practice should therefore be viewed as both incomplete and
insufficiently elaborated.
1. Mao’s creation of the new
revolutionary strategy of People’s War:
It is true that peasant rebellions and guerrilla
warfare have a long history in China, and also occurred in Europe and elsewhere. But after the
success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia,
Marxist-Leninists the world over—with hardly any exceptions—were unable to conceive of any
proletarian revolutionary strategy except that of the “October
Road”; i.e., of a long period of mostly legal struggle leading to eventual insurrection in
the cities, and then most likely followed by a period of civil war. While Mao recognized very
well that this October Road strategy was still necessary and appropriate in advanced capitalist
countries, he analyzed the failure of this approach in China in the 1920s and came up with a
brand new strategy for proletarian revolution in mostly rural, largely feudal countries like
China—namely People’s War. This new strategy of the countryside first surrounding the cities
was successful not only in China, but also in Vietnam.
Included in this theory of People’s War are
some truly brilliant principles of revolutionary military strategy, the proper relationship of
the revolutionary army to the masses, and so forth. Many of these principles are also
applicable in other circumstances and in other types of revolutionary warfare.
2. The method of leadership of the
masses which Mao called “from the masses, to the masses” and which is also known as the
mass line:
This is the democratic method of finding out
from the masses themselves what their ideas are about how to promote their own struggle,
selecting the best of these ideas based on existing revolutionary theory, the revolutionary
goal, and a study of the objective situation, and then returning this political line of
action to the masses and leading them in struggle on this basis.
This method of leadership is perhaps the
single most characteristic feature of Maoist politics, and certainly the most striking aspect.
While it was to some degree implicit in Marxism all along, and was also used informally by
Lenin (as with his recognition of the importance of the soviets (councils) to the Russian
revolution, when they were created by the masses), it was only with Mao that this general
method of leadership was summed up theoretically and then systematically popularized among
the Communist Party members as the fundamental method of revolutionary leadership. This
leadership method played a huge role in the success of the 1949 Revolution and in the
socialist transformation of industry and agriculture. (It was less systematically used in
the GPCR, however, even though Mao himself called for it to be used as the “basic method”
in that revolution in the initial 16 points in the document which launched the GPCR.)
3. The establishment of genuine
socialist society in China during the period of the late 1950s, including in the
countryside:
It may seem obvious that if there is a
successful revolution in the name of the proletariat it will then proceed to really
establish socialism both in industry and in agriculture. However, most of the so-called
socialist revolutions in Eastern Europe after World War II did not really do this. In
industry their “socialism” just meant nationalization and having top-down economic
planning, which almost from the start became hard to distinguish from
state capitalism. It did not really extend, in any
serious way, to the control of workplaces by the workers there. Even worse,
collectivization in the countryside in Eastern Europe was a complete failure. In China,
however, Mao led the country not only in the nationalization of industry and the
establishment of socialist economic planning, but also strongly promoted the supervision
and control of workplaces and their policies by the working class itself, the requirement
that managers also take part in labor, and so forth. (These measures were then greatly
intensified during the GPCR.)
Even more tellingly, Mao led the genuine
collectivization struggle in the countryside into real socialism, culminating with the
creation of the People’s Communes. Because of the use of the mass line, this not only
improved upon what had previously been done in the Soviet Union, it was done in a vastly
more humane, democratic and successful way than Stalin’s brutal collectivization of
agriculture in the USSR.
4. The recognition that the class
struggle continues under socialism and through the entire period of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, and the promotion of serious revolutionary politics in this continuing
struggle:
In hindsight, the entire world proletarian
revolutionary movement looks rather naïve in initially supposing that the seizure of
power by the working class in a country and the consequent nationalization of industry,
along with the creation of economic planning, would by itself soon create a solid and
stable socialist society progressing steadily on the path to communism. Mao was one of the
first to recognize that this was not what was happening in the Soviet Union, and that China
was also in danger of following the capitalist path that Khrushchev and his followers had
pioneered there.
Mao then initiated the “Great Debate” with
the revisionist Soviet Union over the path forward. [Many of the documents
from the Chinese side in this debate are now available at:
https://www.bannedthought.net/China/MaoEra/GreatDebate/index.htm#GreatDebate]
This debate was of world importance in re-establishing Marxism-Leninism as a genuinely
communist movement.
5. Mao’s launching of the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution to stop those within the Communist Party of China itself,
who were on the capitalist road, from destroying socialism in China:
This is one of the most remarkable events
in all of revolutionary history; the leader of a revolutionary party launching a new
revolution against that very party because it had been captured (to a considerable
degree) by representatives of the class enemy.
The GPCR was successful for a decade, while
Mao was still alive, in preventing the capitalist-roaders from destroying socialism.
Unfortunately, after Mao died on September 9, 1976, these revisionists seized power in a
political coup d’etát, and soon turned China back into a capitalist country
again, and later even into a fully-fledged imperialist country. Nevertheless, our world
revolutionary movement, even though it is rather weak at the moment, has learned an
invaluable lesson from all this. Mao has alerted us to a very serious problem which we
will be much better prepared to deal with in the future. For one thing, the communist
parties we now create and develop will be concerned with this long term threat right from
the very beginning.
6. Mao’s contributions to
philosophy:
The Marxist philosophy of dialectical
materialism was created and summarized earlier by Marx, Engels and Lenin, and many of
the basic ideas included in it are actually traceable back to Hegel, Feuerbach, and the
French materialist philosophers of the Enlightenment.
Nevertheless, Mao’s contribution in this area was tremendous. He reconnected up
dialectical materialism to revolutionary politics in the intimate way that had not
occurred since Lenin. Marxist philosophy was changed from the more or less ideological
window dressing that it had become back into a true guide to understanding and changing
the world. Mao took dialectical materialism seriously! And because he did, and led quite
successful revolutionary struggle by doing so, we, his political descendants, also now
take dialectical materialism seriously.
7. Mao’s contributions to
socialist political economy:
Mao’s contributions in this area are quite
underappreciated. Mao did not write on the political economy of capitalism, but he
spent a large part of his life working out how exactly to transform capitalism into
socialism, and then eventually into communism. He analyzed what had gone wrong in
Soviet industry (such as the top down approach and the failure to use the mass line) and
in the rural collectivization efforts there and in Eastern Europe. And he kept China not
only socialist while he was alive, but undergoing significant periodic transformations in
the direction of communism. His pathbreaking efforts and successes in this area remain an
important part of his legacy for the entire world communist movement.
MAO — On Religion
See also:
MARXISM—As a Religion [Mao quote],
TAOISM [Mao quote]
“Primitive humans, yielding before the force of nature and capable only of
using simple tools, were unable to explain change in the environment and so turned to the
gods for help. This was the origin of religion and idealism....
“The science of history has proved to
humankind the materiality and law-like regularity of the world, and given rise to a
consciousness of the uselessness of the fantasies of religion and idealism, and resulted in
humankind’s arrival at materialism.” —Mao, “Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism” (1937),
in Nick Knight, Mao Zedong on Dialectical Materialism (1990), pp. 90 & 91.
“The theory of motion of dialectical materialism is first and foremost in
opposition to the idealism and religious deism of philosophy. The essence of all idealisms
and religious deisms resides in their refusal to recognize the material unity of the world;
they assume that the world’s motion and development are non-material, or were at the very
beginning non-material, and are the consequence of the operation of spirits or God’s
supernatural power. The German idealist philosopher Hegel believed that the contemporary
world had developed out of the so-called ‘World Idea’; and in China, the philosophy of the
Book of Changes and the moral theories of Song and Ming neo-Confucianism all
engendered views of the development of the world which were idealist. Christianity asserts
God created the world, and in Buddhism and the various Chinese fetishisms the motion and
development of the world’s myriad things is put down to the supernatural. All of these
explanations which contemplate motion divorced from matter are fundamentally incompatible
with dialectical materialism. Besides idealism and religion, all pre-Marxist materialism
and all present-day anti-Marxist mechanistic materialism, are proponents of materialist
theories of motion when it comes to discussing natural phenomena, but the moment social
phenomena are mentioned, they cannot but become divorced from material causes and revert to
spiritual causation.” —Mao, “Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism” (1937), ibid., p.
105.
“A man in China is usually subjected to the domination of three systems of
authority: (1) the state system (political authority), ranging from the national, provincial
and county government down to that of the township; (2) the clan system (clan authority),
ranging from the central ancestral temple and its branch temples down to the head of the
household; and (3) the supernatural system (religious authority), ranging from the King of
Hell down to the town and village gods belonging to the nether world, and from the Emperor
of Heaven down to all the various gods and spirits belonging to the celestial world. As for
women, in addition to being dominated by these three systems of authority, they are also
dominated by the men (the authority of the husband). These four authorities—political, clan,
religious and masculine—are the embodiment of the whole feudal-patriarchal system and
ideology, and are the four thick ropes binding the Chinese people, particularly the peasants.
How the peasants have overthrown the political authority of the landlords in the countryside
[in the liberated areas] has been described above. The political authority of the landlords
is the backbone of all the other systems of authority. With that overturned, the clan
authority, the religious auhority and the authority of the husband all begin to totter....
Everywhere religious authority totters as the peasant movement develops. In many places the
peasant associations have taken over the temples of the gods as their offices. Everywhere
they advocate the appropriation of temple property in order to start peasant schools and to
defray the expenses of the associations, calling it ‘public revenue from superstition’. In
Liling Country, prohibiting superstitious practices and smashing idols have become quite the
vogue. In its northern districts the peasants have prohibited the incense-burning processions
to propitiate the god of pestilence. There were many idols in the Taoist temple at Fupoling
in Lukou, but when extra room was needed for the district headquarters of the Kuomintang
[then in alliance with the CCP], they were all piled up in a corner, big and small together,
and no peasant raised any objection. Since then, sacrifices to the gods, the performance of
religious rites and the offering of sacred lamps have rarely been practised when a death
occurs in a family. Because the initiative in this matter was taken by the chairman of the
peasant association, Sun Hsiao-shan, he is hated by the local Taoist priests. In the Lungfeng
Nunnery in the North Third District, the peasants and primary school teachers chopped up the
wooden idols and actually used the wood to cook meat. More than thirty idols in the Tungfu
Monastery in the Southern District were burned by the students and peasants together, and
only two small images of Lord Pao [an ancient official known for his fairness] were snatched
up by an old peasant who said, ‘Don’t commit a sin!’ In places where the power of the peasants
is predominant, only the older peasants and the women still believe in the gods, the younger
peasants no longer doing so. Since the latter control the associations, the overthrow of
religious authority and the eradication of superstition are going on everywhere.”
—Mao, “Report on an Investigation of
the Peasant Movement in Hunan” (March 1927), SW 1:44-45.
“Furthermore, the imperialist powers have never slackened their efforts to
poison the minds of the Chinese people. This is their policy of cultural aggression. And it
is carried out through missionary work, through establishing hospitals and schools, publishing
newspapers and inducing Chinese students to study abroad. Their aim is to train intellectuals
who will serve their interests and to dupe the people.” —Mao (and comrades), “The Chinese
Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party” (December 1939), SW 2:312.
“In the field of political action Communists may form an anti-imperialist
and anti-feudal united front with some idealists and even religious people, but we can never
approve of their idealism or religious doctrines.” —Mao, “On New Democracy” (January 1940),
SW 2:381.
“The Communist Party of China is in full agreement with Dr. Sun’s policy on
nationalities as stated here.... Their spoken and written languages, their manners and customs
and their religious beliefs must be respected.” —Mao, “On Coalition Government” (April 24, 1945),
SW 3:306. Online at:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_25.htm
“All religions are permitted in China’s Liberated Areas, in accordance with
the principle of freedom of religious belief. All believers in Protestantism, Catholicism,
Islamism, Buddhism and other faiths enjoy the protection of the people’s government so long
as they are abiding by its laws. Everyone is free to believe or not to believe; neither
compulsion nor discrimination is permitted.” —Mao, “On Coalition Government” (April 24, 1945),
SW 3:313. Online as indicated above.
“The Communist Party adopts the policy of protecting religion. Whether you
believe in religion or not and whether you believe in this religion or that religion, all of
you will be respected. The Party respects religious belief. This policy, as presently adopted,
will continue to be adopted in the future.” —Mao, comments to the Tibetan Goodwill Mission
(1952), Renmin Ribao [People’s Daily], November 22, 1952. [English translation
from Donald E. MacInnis, Religious Policy and Practice in Communist China (1972), p.
14.]
“In advocating freedom with leadership and democracy under centralized
guidance, we in no way mean that coercive measures should be taken to settle ideological
questions or questions involving the distinction between right and wrong among the people.
All attempts to use administrative orders or coercive measures to settle ideological questions
or questions of right and wrong are not only ineffective but harmful. We cannot abolish
religion by administrative order or force people not to believe in it. We cannot compel people
to give up idealism, any more than we can force them to embrace Marxism. The only way to
settle questions of an ideological nature or controversial issues among the people is by the
democratic method, the method of discussion, criticism, persuasion and education, and not by
the method of coercion or repression.” —Mao, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among
the People” (Feb. 27, 1957), SW 5:389. Online at:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_58.htm
MAO — Personality Cult
Around 1942, with the Rectification Movement
in the Chinese Communist Party which condemned the erroneous and disastrous earlier political lines
of Wang Ming and others, the early signs of a
personality cult began to arise around Mao Zedong. Of course
it is true that political lines are generally associated with prominent individual leaders, and
that goes for correct lines as well as incorrect lines. Thus there is always at least an implicit
commendation involved for those who have led in the adoption of political lines and policies which
have been proven successful. And it is also true that those who have led in the development of past
successful lines have earned the right to be carefully listened to when they propose additional
lines and policies in new situations. However, there is still the danger of starting to think that
political lines are correct because only that one person is capable of developing them, and
even that whatever that one person says in the future must also be correct.
While there were some signs of this sort of thing
in the CCP at least from 1942 on, it got taken to absurd extremes during the first few years of
the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (i.e., in the period 1966-1970).
For a while it was practically mandatory to refer to Mao as “the Great Leader Chairman Mao” if not
the fuller phrase “the Great Leader, the Great Supreme Commander, the Great Teacher and the Great
Helmsman Chairman Mao”. Successes in agriculture, industry, education and all spheres of life were
attributed to Mao or Mao Tsetung Thought. Mao badges were produced in huge numbers (possibly more
than 2 billion according to the Wikipedia) and it was practically obligatory to wear such badges
over one’s heart and to carry a copy of the “Little Red Book”
(Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung).
It is said that people were also often required to recite quotations from Mao. Mao was in fact
treated almost as a living god by huge numbers of people.
Although these days most Maoists inside and outside
China tend to cringe at the most extreme manifestations of the Mao personality cult, it is still
widely defended as having been “necessary” for the most part. The argument in favor of promoting
the personality cult around Mao was that—given the strength and growing domination of the CCP by
the capitalist roaders—this was the only way to build a mass movement to expose and oust these
enemies from positions of power in the party and government. There was no doubt some considerable
truth to this, but it only pushes the central issue back a bit: How did it happen that things got
so out of hand in the first place?! Surely there must be some strong criticism of Mao and the
other genuine proletarian revolutionaries in the CCP for allowing this crisis situation to develop
to the point where a personality cult around Mao could be deemed necessary in order to re-establish
proletarian rule!
By far the worst promoter of the Mao cult was
Lin Biao, who among other things introduced the fad of constantly
waving the “Little Red Book”. And after Lin’s downfall the personality cult was soon drastically
cut back. The requirement that Mao badges be constantly worn soon diasappeared. Nevertheless, Mao
himself must receive the primary blame for promoting this personality cult around him, even though
he resisted some of the wildest aspects of it (see his letter below to Jiang Qing) and insisted
that it be greatly toned down during the last years of his life.
See also:
PERSONALITY CULT,
CULT (Political), and the long article
"Personality Cult: Is It
Necessary for Revolution?", by Ranganayakamma, written in 1983, and a discussion from 2007
occasioned by that article at:
https://www.massline.org/SingleSpark/Theory/P-Cult-Discuss1.htm
“The center is asking my permission to publish the speech given by my friend
[Lin Biao], and I shall agree.... I have doubts about some of his views. I have never believed
that my little red book contained so much spiritual power. When he praises it to heaven, the
whole country will do the same. It is all exaggerated.... (I have been pushed by them onto
Mount Liang [among the rebels]), and I cannot refuse my consent. To be forced to give it
against my convictions is something that has never happened to me in all my life.... I feel
sure of myself, yet I have doubts.... At the Hangzhou conference last April, I said that I
did not approve of the formulas my friend uses, but my words had no effect.... They have used
even worse expressions, they have exalted me to the heavens as the miracle of miracles....
I have become the Zhong Kui [a terrifying mythological character] of the XX century Communist
party.... I’ll break my bones in the fall.... If they have already demolished Marx and Lenin,
why not us, too—and with more reason? You should think about this and not let victory go to
your head.... Our task today is to knock out some of the rightist elements in the Party and
in the country (to knock all of them out would be impossible); in seven or eight years we
could launch a new campaign.... When can these lines be published?.... Perhaps the moment will
be after my death, when the Right will have appropriated the power.... The Right will exploit
my words to raise the black banner, but without much luck. Since the Chinese empire was overt
in 1911, the reaction has never been able to hold power for long. The Left, however, will use
my words toward organizing itself, and the Right will be overthrown...”
—Mao, in a letter to his wife Jiang
Qing, July 8, 1966. From Edoarda Masi, China Winter: Workers, Mandarins, and the Purge of
the Gang of Four (NY: 1982), p. 19. Originally from an English translation of the letter
in Issues and Studies, January 1973, pp. 94-96, and in the Yearbook of Chinese
Communism, 1973, pp. 2-3.
[Alas, it seems that the capitalist
roaders in China have held onto power much longer than Mao expected. —Ed.]
“We discussed my account of our last talk, in January 1965, in which I
had reported his [Mao’s] acknowledgement that there was indeed a ‘cult of personality’ in
China—and moreover there was reason for one. Some people [in China] had criticized me for
writing about that.
“So, he said, what if I had written
about a ‘cult of personality’ in China? There was such a thing. Why not write about it?
It was a fact ... those officials who had opposed my return to China in 1967 and 1968 had
belonged to an ultraleftist group which had seized the foreign ministry for a time, but
they were all cleared out long ago. At the time of our 1965 colloquy, Mao continued, a great
deal of power—over propaganda work within the provincial and local party committees, and
especially within the Peking Municipal Party Committee—had been out of his control. That
was why he had then stated that there was need for more personality cult, in order to
stimulate the masses to dismantle the anti-Mao party bureaucracy.
“Of course the personality cult had
been overdone. Today, things were different. It was hard, the chairman said, for people to
overcome the habits of 3,000 years of emperor-worshiping tradition. The so-called ‘Four
Greats’—those epithets applied to Mao himself: ‘Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great Supreme
Commander, Great Helmsman’—what a nuisance. They would all be elminated sooner or later.
Only the word ‘teacher’ would be retained—that is, simply schoolteacher. Mao had always
been a schoolteacher and still was one. He was a primary schoolteacher in Changsha even
before he was a Communist. All the rest of the titles would be declined.
“‘I often wonder,’ I said, ‘whether
those who shout Mao the loudest and wave the most banners are not—as some say—waving the
Red Flag in order to defeat the Red Flag.’
“Mao nodded. He said such people fell
into three categories. The first were sincere people. The second were those who drifted
with the tide—they conformed because everyone else shouted ‘Long live.’ The third
category were hypocrites. I was right not to be taken in by such stuff.”
—Edgar Snow, “A Conversation with
Mao Tse-tung”, Life magazine, April 30, 1971, p. 40. This article is online at:
https://www.bannedthought.net/China/Individuals/Snow-Edgar/EdgarSnow-Life-1971-April30.pdf
MAOISM (The Term)
The term ‘Maoism’ is the shortened form of ‘Marxism-Leninism-Maoism’ (or ‘MLM’). This is the name of
the revolutionary science as it has evolved, first from the writings and activity of Marx and Engels,
then, in addition, from the writings and revolutionary activity of V. I. Lenin, and more recently from
the writings and revolutionary activity of Mao Zedong, as well as of course from their close associates,
followers and the revolutionary masses they connected up with.
[Mao, on the issue of whether the term ‘Maoism’ should be used, is said to have
responded this way in a conversation with Wang Jiaxiang, another long-time member of the Chinese
Communist Party:] “Maoism cannot be mentioned. I am a student of Marx and Lenin. How can I rank
with them? Marx has Marxism, Lenin has Leninism, I cannot be labelled ‘Maoism’. I have no ‘ism’.
My ‘ism’ is Marxism and Leninism. You must [instead] mention Mao Zedong Thought. Everyone has their
own thoughts. We can’t casually mention ‘ism’. I still believe that I haven’t matured as a system
of thought. It’s not modesty, it’s true.”
—As quoted by a Nepalese student studying in
China, Aneka Rajbhandari, in her article “What the Chinese think about Nepal’s Maoists”, Feb. 17,
2022, online at:
https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/what-the-chinese-think-about-nepals-maoists/
[We do not know the original source for this quotation. Wang Jiaxiang (1906-1974) was one of
the “28 Bolsheviks” who studied in the early Soviet Union and then returned to China attempting to
lead the revolution there in rather sorry fashion. The original source might thus be in some writing
by Wang, possibly only available in full in Chinese. It should also be openly stated that even if
Marx did not call himself a “Marxist”, and Lenin did not call himself a “Leninist”, and Mao did not
call himself a “Maoist”, it is still entirely reasonable and appropriate that their revolutionary
followers today should name our revolutionary science after all three of them, the greatest of the
creators of our science and ideology. —Ed.]
The name most commonly used in the West for a style of formal clothing commonly worn by Mao Zedong
and other Chinese leaders during the Mao era, but which was actually created at the request of
Sun Yat-sen, and promoted by him early in the 20th century. Sun
Yat-sen is also known as Sun Zhongshan, so in China this is called a Zhongshan suit. It is also
sometimes called the “People’s suit”.