Maoism

Maoism is a body of doctrine developed by Mao Zedong (formerly transliterated as “Mao Tse-Tung,” [Page 1482]1893–1976) and his associates in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for Chinese revolution and socialist construction from the 1920s until Mao's death in 1976. It is composed of many different kinds of ideas and ideology, and strategy and tactics and is believed to be the creative result of applying Marxism–Leninism to China, a semi-feudal and semicolonial country without modern industrial developments. Mao Zedong is the principal Chinese Marxist theorist, a Communist statesman who contributed to the founding of the CCP in 1921, the Communist Army in 1927, and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 after a long period of military struggle. In contrast with Karl Marx spending his most of life in reading and writing as an editor, reporter, and scholar, Mao had taken part in almost all military struggles, political conflicts, and social movements during his time. He emerged as a supreme leader in 1935 in the CCP because his smart ideas and successful tactics were adopted by most of the CCP leaders. He was chairman of the PRC from 1949 to 1959 and chairman of the CCP until his death in 1976.

After a bloody split in April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek of the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, dismantled the united front with the Communist Party against the warlord government in Beijing and broke with his allies in the Communist Party. In the following campaigns, many communist organizations were destroyed, and a large number of communist leaders and members killed. Mao led several peasant uprisings in Hunan and Jiangxi provinces and established the communist military bases during the early 1930s. Based on these experiences, Mao realized the importance of Chinese peasantry in the Chinese communist revolution. In October 1934, Mao and the communists retreated from Jiangxi under the strong military attack by Chiang's Nationalist Army and started their epic Long March to the new base in Shanxi province. By making use of the second united front with the Nationalist Party against Japan, Mao and his communist comrades had not only consolidated their base and expanded their sphere of influence but also formulated a set of ideology and methodology for Chinese revolution, which was officially described as Maoism in 1945. In a new civil war between the Communists and Nationalists from 1946 to 1949, the Nationalist government ruled by Chiang was defeated and retreated to Taiwan. As a result, the Communist Party ascended to power and Mao Zedong declared the founding of the PRC in Beijing on October 1, 1949.

According to the logic of Marxist socialism, socialism based on it would succeed only after the capitalist commodity economy developed fully and highly. After the communist revolution succeeded and the Communist Party came to power in 1949 in China, Mao Zedong and the communist leaders decided to implement and promote the socialist transformation of Chinese economy and society, ignoring the basic facts about underdevelopment and dreaming that their country would immediately leap forward into communism. Therefore, to build socialism and realize communism as soon as possible, they conducted radical and drastic reforms in socialist practice in the light of Marxist theory, especially Stalinist theory. They tried to eliminate private ownership and establish public ownership, reduced free competition, developed the planned economy, limited the role of capital in distribution of resources, and promoted egalitarianism to eradicate economic exploitation and suppression. To promote the socialist transformation and build a new socialist country, the Communist Party must always keep the power in the hand of the proletarian class, take the class struggle as basic line, and consolidate the central leadership. After 8 years of socialist transformation, Mao Zedong declared confidently in 1957 that China was building socialism, that the petty bourgeoisie in agriculture and handicrafts and the bourgeoisie in industry and commerce had both experienced changes, that the individual economy had been transformed into a collective economy, and that capitalist private ownership had been transformed into socialist public ownership.

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