Chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976)
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Early Years
Mao was a peasant, who discovered Marx whilst working as a librarian's attistant in Peking (Bejing). He attended the local classes of the anarchist work-study movement, and took part in the May the 4th Movement, the students that anarchists had sent to France returned with a different agenda, and established Chinese Communist Party, turning their back on libertarian socialism their spokesman Ch'en Tu-hsiu defined their aims as 'enlightened despotism' - which must have been music to Stalin's ears, and in 1921 Mao was a founder member. In 1926 Stalin encouraged the CCP to back Chaing Kai-Check's KMT - while Trotsky warned against it branding the Nationalists as fascists - they followed Stalin's advice and were butchered by KMT as soon as the Northern provinces were secure. Their bases in the cities destroyed, the CCP retreated to Hunan - Mao's birthplace, to regroup and rethink. Mao became the Party's guide to the Hunan peasantry, and his unbridaled energy made him a rising (red) star of the Party. Mao was unused to both urban and accedemic life, so it was perhaps natural that he should envison a revolution based on the peasantry, not the proletariat as Marx had predicted.
"The present upsurge of the peasant movement is a colossal event. In a very short time, in China's central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will arrive like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back. They will smash all the trammels that bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation. They will sweep all the imperialists, warlords, corrupt officials, local tyrants and evil gentry into their graves. Every revolutionary party and every revolutionary comrade will be put to the test, to be accepted or rejected as they decide."
Indeed Marx and Lenin were by no means Mao's only influence, he studied the tactics of the peasant revolts in the Chinese classics, such as The Water Margin, and much of his thought and strategy was drawn from these ancient novels.
And so, along with Zhu De and his muntineers, in 1930 he established the Jianxi (Kiangsi) Soviet, from which this Red Army would wage a 'protracted revolution', establishing rural soviets, through a 'peoples war'. The Soviet included some 3 million people. Once established the urban party leadership (still backed and trained by Stalin) returned and Mao lost his position as head of the soviet. So disappeared his policy toward the peasants, and his guerrilla tactics. At the end of 1933 the KMT had encircled the Soviets and the 100,000 strong Red Army began it circuitous Long March (1934-5) of over 6,000 miles before finding a saecure rural base in Yan'an in Shaanxi province.
During this period Mao became the undesputed leader of the Party and the Long March became the founding legend of that Party, fit to sit alongside The Water Margin!
Mao felt that there should be no division between guerrillas, Party officials and peasants, and revolutionary duties included farming,
Mao was a peasant, who discovered Marx whilst working as a librarian's attistant in Peking (Bejing). He attended the local classes of the anarchist work-study movement, and took part in the May the 4th Movement, the students that anarchists had sent to France returned with a different agenda, and established Chinese Communist Party, turning their back on libertarian socialism their spokesman Ch'en Tu-hsiu defined their aims as 'enlightened despotism' - which must have been music to Stalin's ears, and in 1921 Mao was a founder member. In 1926 Stalin encouraged the CCP to back Chaing Kai-Check's KMT - while Trotsky warned against it branding the Nationalists as fascists - they followed Stalin's advice and were butchered by KMT as soon as the Northern provinces were secure. Their bases in the cities destroyed, the CCP retreated to Hunan - Mao's birthplace, to regroup and rethink. Mao became the Party's guide to the Hunan peasantry, and his unbridaled energy made him a rising (red) star of the Party. Mao was unused to both urban and accedemic life, so it was perhaps natural that he should envison a revolution based on the peasantry, not the proletariat as Marx had predicted.
"The present upsurge of the peasant movement is a colossal event. In a very short time, in China's central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will arrive like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back. They will smash all the trammels that bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation. They will sweep all the imperialists, warlords, corrupt officials, local tyrants and evil gentry into their graves. Every revolutionary party and every revolutionary comrade will be put to the test, to be accepted or rejected as they decide."
Indeed Marx and Lenin were by no means Mao's only influence, he studied the tactics of the peasant revolts in the Chinese classics, such as The Water Margin, and much of his thought and strategy was drawn from these ancient novels.
And so, along with Zhu De and his muntineers, in 1930 he established the Jianxi (Kiangsi) Soviet, from which this Red Army would wage a 'protracted revolution', establishing rural soviets, through a 'peoples war'. The Soviet included some 3 million people. Once established the urban party leadership (still backed and trained by Stalin) returned and Mao lost his position as head of the soviet. So disappeared his policy toward the peasants, and his guerrilla tactics. At the end of 1933 the KMT had encircled the Soviets and the 100,000 strong Red Army began it circuitous Long March (1934-5) of over 6,000 miles before finding a saecure rural base in Yan'an in Shaanxi province.
During this period Mao became the undesputed leader of the Party and the Long March became the founding legend of that Party, fit to sit alongside The Water Margin!
Mao felt that there should be no division between guerrillas, Party officials and peasants, and revolutionary duties included farming,
