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The enigma of Mao Zedong

By Heiko Khoo: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, December 26, 2013

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Yang Keqi touches up his painting, a portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong, in Changsha, Central China's Hunan province, Dec 5, 2013. He spent nine years on 12 pieces of oil paintings for an exhibition to commemorate the 120th anniversary of Mao's birth.[Photo/Asianewsphoto]

The post revolutionary era in China posed the same dilemmas that had arisen in the USSR. How to create socialism in a backward country? Karl Marx once wrote that it might be possible to use ancient peasant collectivism in Russia as a foundation for socialism. In the Russian civil war 1919-1921 Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the USSR, dreamt that war-communism could lay the basis for real communism, and he later believed that utopian experiments might be viable, provided electricity and industry advanced rapidly enough to foster cooperation by linking together the rural village economy to urban socialist centers.

Post revolutionary China began life with similar policies to today's reform era China, but its trajectory was in the opposite direction. Industry and infrastructure to be created from scratch, health, education and culture had to advance, and the sabotage of capitalists and their supporters had to be contained or repressed. Excess, expressed in rage and revolutionary justice, characterizes all great revolutionary transformations in history, for example, the English revolution, the French Revolution, and the American Civil war.

Mao's boldness, combined with his towering influence within the party and state apparatus, gave him an ability to inspire action, mobilize the masses, and repress opposition. This created an environment conducive to two ultra-left post revolutionary phases, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Both movements were inspired by grand and noble objectives but both resulted in vast tragedies. The Great Leap Forward sought to galvanize collectivist energy, to transform the technical level of Chinese society in one blow, and catch up with the economies of the wealthiest countries. It failed because the disproportions caused by economic backwardness could not be overcome by willpower or collectivism alone. The material foundations of society, i.e. the overall development of the productive forces must provide the preconditions for any leap towards socialism. Perhaps it would have been possible to overtake America by 1980 had the USSR, Eastern Europe and China jointly developed and integrated their economic plans together. But, alas, this was not to be.

The Cultural Revolution reflected the fundamental contradictions of any developmental socialist state. How does one develop a socialist economy without simultaneously incentivising people economically, or without bureaucratic systems of administration and command, with all their attendant privileges and abuses of power? Mao's followers engaged in "class struggle" but the cure was often worse than the illness. Indeed, the definition of class enemies was often arbitrarily connected to the family background and psychological profiling of Red Guards and others rather than having any real political substance. The motivations of protagonists frequently corresponded with arbitrary power struggles.

Nevertheless, Mao Zedong's dream of a new China, dragged out of the Imperial era and semi-colonial subservience, was realized. Even the greatest historical actors play out their roles in circumstances not of their own creation. Their followers and enemies clash in conditions soaked in historical legacies that mould the actions of mankind in ways that cannot be revealed by the mere words used in these battles.

Mao Zedong made history on a grand scale and helped to elevate the Chinese masses to the center of the modern world. When Mao first studied China's working class, it was only 2 million strong. Now China's working class is the largest and most powerful working class in the world. It will soon be possible for the workers to become the real "masters of the state," not in words, phrases or slogans, but in deeds. For, in today's China, the material conditions required to realize socialism are developing before our eyes. So the original dreams that motivated Mao Zedong and the pioneers of Chinese Communism are becoming possible. Perhaps this is part of the reason why Mao is so revered in China.

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://china.org.cn/opinion/heikokhoo.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

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