Maoism Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Maoism refers to the body of thought and practices associated with Mao Zedong (1893–1976). As the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Mao led the party to victory in 1949 by defeating the Nationalist Party under Chiang Kaishek (1887–1975) in a protracted civil war that dated back to 1927. Maoism was thus inextricably linked to the Chinese Communist revolution.

When the CCP was first founded in 1921, it was directly under the command of the Comintern (1919–1943), an international communist organization founded in Moscow, and followed its prescribed Leninist-Stalinist revolutionary strategy. This entailed a temporary alliance with the Nationalist Party under the first United Front in 1924 in order to stage a bourgeois national revolution that aimed at forging national unity. But the alliance was short-lived. Chiang Kai-shek, who succeeded Sun Yat-sen as the leader of the Nationalists in 1925, launched a full-blown attack on the Communists in 1927. However, this major political setback for the party was to pave the way for the rise of Mao as its paramount leader, with his own distinctive brand of communism.

Maoism As A Revolutionary Doctrine

Under Mao, Marxism-Leninism underwent two important modifications. First was the systematic recruitment of the peasantry as a revolutionary class that was vital to the communist movement. Partly out of disillusionment with the workers, and partly because of firsthand experience in rural China, Mao provided a powerful account of what he considered to be progressive revolutionary acts of the peasantry in his well-known work, “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan” (1927). Second was the appropriation of what should have been an internationalist movement for a nationalist cause. As Mao put it, there is no such thing as Marxism in the abstract. Rather, there is only “concrete” Marxism, which is the “application of Marxism via a national form” (Mao, “On the New Stage,” 1938).

These modifications were officially adopted by the CCP under the banner of Mao Zedong Thought in its 1945 Party Constitution. Mao Zedong Thought as such was Marxism Leninism adapted to the Chinese reality, which entailed the fact that China was a premodern agrarian society. Moreover, since the mid-nineteenth century, its sovereignty had persistently been encroached upon by Western and, eventually, Japanese imperialism. But more important, underlying these modifications was a strong determination by Mao the leader to bring about a fundamental remaking of the Chinese polity and society in accordance with what he took to be the Marxist historical trajectory. Having been chased out of the Jiangxi Soviet (1931–1934) by the Nationalists and survived the Long March (1934–1935), Mao appeared to be more convinced that the human will, if engaged methodically, could overcome any obstacles that came into the way of this revolutionary endeavor.

Human will aside, Mao was also an astute strategist. Not only did he subscribe wholeheartedly to the Leninist notion of a vanguard party led by professional revolutionaries like himself, Mao was convinced that “political power grows out of the barrel of guns” (Mao, “Problems of War and Strategy,” 1938). Maoism is thus known for its skillful deployment of guerrilla tactics, which capitalized on effective use of limited resources, including recruiting civilians for small-scale military operations. In addition, along with his chief military comrades, Zhu De (1886–1976) and Peng Dehuai (1898–1974), Mao built the legendary People’s Liberation Army, which was marked by its ideological commitment to the revolutionary cause and its solidarity with the people. In short, strategic deployment of localized military operations and grassroots political work were all part of a larger war strategy. These elements of Maoism were widely adopted for colonial struggles in Asia and Africa after World War II (1939–1945) and continue to fuel insurgency in countries such as Peru and India.

Maoism And Development

As a development strategy, however, Maoism has a much more troubled legacy. It was characterized by three elements: (1) a voluntaristic approach to change by mobilizing the people on a mass scale (yundong), often to the level of frenzy; (2) a commitment to level the differences between the city and the countryside, the peasants and the workers, and mental and manual labor; and (3) the conviction that socialism is capable of generating its own class enemies. Together, these factors were instrumental in orchestrating two of the largest human-made disasters of the twentieth century—the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961) and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1969). Tens of millions of lives were lost as a result.

Bibliography:

Alexander, Robert J. International Maoism in the Developing World. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999.
Knight, Nick. Rethinking Mao: Explorations in Mao Zedong’s Thought. Plymouth, U.K.: Lexington Books, 2007.
Mao Tse-tung. Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. 5 vols. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1967–1977. www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/ selected-works/index.htm.
Mao Zedong. The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao: From the Hundred Flowers to the Great Leap Forward. Edited by R. MacFarquhar,T. Cheek, and E.Wu. Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1989.
Schram, Stuart. The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung. Rev. ed. New York: Praeger, 1977.
The Thought of Mao Tse-tung. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Spence, Jonathan. Mao Zedong. New York:Viking, 1999.

This example Maoism Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.