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Leninism and Maoism: Some Populist Perspectives in Marxism-Leninism in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Maurice Meisner
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Isaac Deutscher once observed that the Chinese Communist revolution presents the paradox of “the most archaic of nations avidly absorbing the most modern of revolutionary doctrines, the last word in revolution, and translating it into action. Lacking any native ancestry, Chinese Communism descends straight from Bolshevism. Mao stands on Lenin's shoulders.” This echoes the generally accepted view of the historical relationship between Maoism and Leninism. Among most western students of Chinese communism it is something of a truism that Marxism came to China in its Leninist form; for different reasons, Maoists have long been saying that Mao (and now only Mao) is the true heir of Lenin. Indeed, the “thought of Mao Tse-tung” is no longer simply considered the practical application of “the universal truths” of Marxism-Leninism to the specifically Chinese historical situation, but is explicitly celebrated as a new and higher stage of universally valid revolutionary theory; it is “invincible Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought” that now propels world history forward. In contemporary Maoist eyes, Mao stands on the shoulders of Lenin as firmly as Lenin presumably stands on the shoulders of Marx.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 45 , March 1971 , pp. 2 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1971

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References

1 Deutscher, Isaac, Ironies of History (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 89–90.Google Scholar

2 This recent and rather awkward term is more-or-less officially canonized in “Leninism or Social-Imperialism?—In Commemoration of the Centenary of the Birth of the Great Lenin” (Editorial in Jen-min jih-pao, Chieh-fang-chün pao and Hung-ch'i). See Peking Review (24 04 1970), pp. 5–15.Google Scholar

3 “Classical Russian Populism” generally refers to the movement (largely inspired by the writings of Herzen and Chernyshevsky) between about 1850 and 1880, the period prior to the degeneration of Populism into revolutionary terrorism and prior to the widespread influence of Marxism among the Russian intelligentsia. The discussion here will be confined to the intellectual rather than the political tendencies of the movement and will focus on those aspects of Populist ideology particularly relevant for contemporary comparative purposes. The discussion is based largely on the following: Venturi, Franco, Roots of Revolution (New York, 1966)Google Scholar; lonescu, G. and Gellner, E., Populism, Its Meaning and National Characteristics (London, 1969)Google Scholar; Walicki, A., The Controversy Over Capitalism: Studies in the Social Philosophy of the Russian Populists (London, 1969)Google Scholar; Haimson, Leopold, The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism (Cambridge, Mass., 1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and various writings of Herzen and Chemyshevsky available in English translation. For an excellent discussion of the semantic, conceptual and historical problems involved in defining the “classical era” of Russian Populism, see Walicki, A., The Controversy Over Capitalism, pp. 1–28.Google Scholar

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56 Although it is difficult to employ “Populism” as a general socio-historical concept, the difficulties are no greater (and perhaps less misleading) than the widespread use of such terms as “nationalism” and “modernization” as general concepts. Peter Worsley has made the most fruitful attempt to define and apply Populism as a general socio-historical term. See The Third World (London, 1964)Google Scholar, esp. Chapter 4; and “The Concept of Populism” in lonescu, and Gellner, , Populism pp. 212–250.Google Scholar

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63 “Chung-kuo koming ho nung-min yün-tung ti ts'e-lüeh” (“The Chinese Revolution and the Strategy of the Peasant Movement”), Pu-erh-sat-wei-k'e (The Bolshevik), Vol. III, Nos. 4–5 (12 05 1930), pp. 114 and 141.Google Scholar

64 For example, the Pravda article “Scientific Socialism and Petty Bourgeois Ideology” (24 10 1966)Google Scholar, in Current Digest of the Soviet Press, Vol. XVIII, No. 43, pp. 4–6.Google Scholar