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The Legend of “Maoism” (concluded)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Extract

In the first part of this article I argued that the “Maoist” thesis is a “Maoist” legend. It is so because it is based on a false concept of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. And it is so also for two other reasons. Contrary to “Maoist” assertions, Mao in his Hunan Report did not outline a concept for a Communist-led peasant-supported revolution; and he did not, in 1940, present himself as an original top-ranking Marxist-Leninist theoretician.

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Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1960

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References

92 His later statement that from 1924 the Chinese Communists “only vaguely” understood the theory of the peculiarities of the Chinese revolution (Tse-tung, Mao, Selected Works, 4 vols. (New York: International Publishers, 1954), Vol. III, p. 112 [hereafter cited as Mao, SW]), did not do justice to such mature Communists as Ch'en Tu-hsiu, but it was probably true enough of the young Mao.Google Scholar

93 Snow, Edgar, Red Star Over China (New York: Random House, 1938), p. 143 (hereafter cited as Snow 1938).Google Scholar

94 See Protocol of the Second National Congress of the K.M.T. (Chung-kuo kuo-mintang ti erh tz'u ch'üan-kuo tai-piao-hui hui chi-lu) (Canton, 1926), p. 43Google Scholar. As acting head, Mao obviously ran the department. Hence he was substantially correct when, in his account to Snow, he claimed to have been “chief of the Agitprop department of the Kuomintang” (Snow 1938, p. 143).Google Scholar

95 Snow, 1938, p. 144.Google Scholar

96 On February 28, according to Hsiang-tao chou-pao, 03 12, 1927, p. 2063.Google Scholar

97 For a fuller political analysis, see Short History, Chap. V, A, 3. In the not too distant future I hope to give a detailed account of the various versions of the Hunan Report I have located during a search that I began in the early fifties.

98 Documentary History, p. 495.Google Scholar

99 An edition of the Report dated August 1946 published in Luan-nan Hsien (N.-E. Hopei) does not contain the second section. Two 1947 editions of Mao's selected Works are equally deficient, as is a third published in March 1947 by the Chin-ch'achi Central Bureau of the C.C.P. But a supplement to this last collection dated December 1947 gives the full text An undated edition of the Hunan Report by the Chi-tung branch of the Hsin-hua Book Company included Chap. Ill with an editorial note on the last page stating that this section had “very recently” been “recopied” (from an unidentified source, perhaps the just-mentioned December 1947 Supplement), but that the original text had “not yet been found.” The rediscovered text of December 1947 contains several passages which by Communist standards are embarrassing and which have been deleted in the official version of 1951. See Mao's story that as a student he had considered the peasants “stupid and hateful people” and his remark that the revolutionary cadres were riding in sedan chairs perpetuating for themselves the privileges denied to others (Tse-tung, Mao, Hsüan-chi [Chin-ch'a-chi, , ed., no place, 1947], Supplement I, pp. 37 and 33Google Scholar [hereafter cited as Mao 1947]). I therefore believe that the 1947 text of the second section substantially reproduced the peculiarities of the original piece.

1 Inprecor 1926, p. 1583.Google Scholar

2 Inprecor 1926, p. 1584.Google Scholar

3 Tse-tung, Mao, “Hu-nan nung-min yün-tung k'ao-ch'a (Report of an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan),” Hsiang-tao chou-pao 1927, p. 2067Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Mao 1927); cf. Documentary History, p. 89.Google Scholar

4 This is confirmed by a footnote to this passage in the official 1951 edition (Tse-tung, Mao, Hsüan-chiGoogle Scholar [Peking: Jen-min ch'u-pan shin, 1951], p. 46 [hereafter cited as Mao, HC]; Mao, SW I, p. 302).

5 Mao, 1947, p. 30Google Scholar; Mao, SW I, p. 48.

6 Snow, 1938, p. 144.Google Scholar

7 Mao, 1927, p. 2063Google Scholar; Mao, SW I, p. 21.

8 Documentary History, p. 80.Google Scholar

9 Mao 1947, p. 26; Mao SW I, p. 42.

10 Inprecor 1926, p. 1591.Google Scholar

11 Chinese Correspondence, Vol. II, No. 8 (05 15), p. 10 et seq.Google Scholar

12 Mao, SW I, p. 31.

13 Mao, SW I, p. 50; cf. p. 48.

14 Political Report of the Central Committee of the C.C.P., dated January 26, 1927 (Wilbur, C. Martin and Lien-ying, Julie How, Documents on Communism, Nationalism and Soviet Advisers in China 1918–27, edited with Introductory Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), p. 433.)Google Scholar

15 Declaration to the Peasants by the Third Plenary Session of the Central Executive Committee of the K.M.T., March 1927 (Chinese Correspondence, Vol. II, No. 7 (1927), p. 9).Google Scholar

16 This demand was made in the second section of the Hunan Report (Mao 1947, p. 25; cf. Mao, SW I, p. 41 et seq.).

17 Nassonov, N., Fokine, N., Albrecht, A.. “The Letter from Shanghai,” in Leon Trotsky, Problems of the Chinese Revolution, translated by Shachtman, Max (New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1932), p. 418Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Nassonov 1932).

18 Stalin, , W X, p. 21.Google Scholar

19 Chinese Correspondence, Vol. II, No. 7 (1927), p. 9.Google Scholar

20 Mao 1927, p. 2066; Documentary History, p. 88.Google Scholar

21 Mao, 1927, p. 2065; Documentary History, p. 83.Google Scholar

22 Inprecor 1926, p. 649.Google Scholar

23 Mao, SW III, p. 137. Italics mine. As his authority Mao cited Stalin.

24 See Stalin W VIII, p. 384 et seq.; X, p. 18; cf. Inprecor 1926, pp. 1478 and 1548.Google Scholar

25 Nassonov 1932, p. 418.

26 Mao, SW I, p. 47.

27 Documentary History, p. 78.Google Scholar

28 Inprecor 1927, p. 706.Google Scholar

29 Die Chinesische Frage. Auf dem 8. Plenum der Exekutive der Kommunistischen Internationale Mai 1927 (Hamburg/Berlin, 1928), p. 12 (hereafter cited as DCF).

30 DCF, p. 13; cf. Mao 1927, p. 2063; Documentary History, p. 81.Google Scholar

31 No. 2, pp. 107–122. No date.

32 Excerpts from the Hunan Report were published in Inprecor 1927, p. 760Google Scholaret seq., and the Comintern official, Asiaticus, included a German translation of the Chinese Correspondence version in his book, Von Kanton bis Shanghai (Wien-Berlin, 1928), pp. 273276.Google Scholar

33 People's Tribune, 03 31, 1927.Google Scholar

34 People's Tribune, 05 28.Google Scholar

35 People's Tribune, 06 9.Google Scholar

36 People's Tribune, 06 11.Google Scholar

37 Documentary History, p. 112.Google Scholar

38 Ibid. p. 100.

39 Isaacs, 1938, p. 397.Google Scholar

40 Roy, M. N., Revolution and Counter-Revolution in China (Calcutta: Renaissance Publishers, 1946), p. 615.Google Scholar

41 Snow 1938, p. 143 et seq.

42 Chung-kuo nung-min, 03 1926, pp. 113.Google Scholar

43 Snow, 1938, p. 144.Google Scholar

44 Schwartz 1951, p. 100 et seq.

45 Kuo-wen Chou-pao 1928, No. 3, p. 5.Google Scholar

46 Snow, 1938, p. 149.Google Scholar Italics mine.

47 Ibid. p. 151.

48 Schwartz, 1951, p. 101.Google Scholar

49 Inprecor 1927, p. 1075 et seq.Google Scholar

50 Ch'iu-pai, Ch'ü, Chung-kuo ko-ming yü kung-ch'an-tang (the Chinese Revolution and the Communist Party) (no place, 1928), p. 127 (hereafter cited as Ch'ü 1928).Google Scholar

51 Ch'ü, 1928, p. 127.Google Scholar

52 Speech on the Political Complexion of the Russian Opposition (Stalin, , W X, p. 163)Google Scholar. Cf. also Pravda of September 30 (Inprecor 1927, p. 1239).Google Scholar

53 Kuo-wen Chou-pao 1928, No. 2, p. 7.Google Scholar

54 Ibid. p. 6.

55 Ibid. p. 7.

56 Ibid. No. 3, p. 6.

57 Ibid. No. 3, p. 7.

58 Mao, SW I, p. 99.

59 Ibid. p. 126 et seq.

60 Mao 1947, Supplement IV, p. 98.

61 Documentary History, p. 261.Google Scholar

62 Ibid. p. 260 et seq. Italics mine.

63 Mao, SW III, p. 112.

64 Mao, SW III, p. 112. Italics mine.

65 Ibid. p. 114.

66 Schwartz, Benjamin, “On the ‘Originality’ of Mao Tse-tung,” Foreign Affairs XXXIV, No. 1 (10 1955), p. 68 (hereafter cited as Schwartz 1955).Google Scholar

67 Ibid. p. 67 et seq.

68 Could this be the 70 per cent, formula that Schwartz and his colleagues consider one of the manifestations of a “Maoist” bent in the Hunan Report? Robert North noted its deletion in 1953 (North, Robert C., Moscow and Chinese Communists [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1953], p. 171)Google Scholar, as did Brandt recently (see below, footnote 72).

69 See Mao, SW I, p. 99; cf. pp. 172, 278.

70 Schwartz, 1955, p. 70.Google Scholar

71 Ibid. p. 71.

72 Brandt, Conrad, Stalin, 's Failure in China 1924–27 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), p. 107.Google Scholar Brandt views the omission of the 70 per cent, formula as a confirmation of the “Maoist” thesis. He tells us: “Mao's mathematics … revealed with mathematical clearness how sharply his view of the struggle in China differed from that of Stalin. They revealed more, in any case, than he cared to show to the public once he was in power.” Hence, the new editions of Mao's Report “omit the formula which conveyed its meaning too clearly” (op. cit. p. 109et seq.).Google Scholar

In a footnote Brandt also states that “an English translation of Mao's report” appears in the Documentary History(op. cit. p. 209).Google Scholar Thus as late as 1958 he still shows no awareness of the fact that the piece he, Schwartz and Fairbank included in the History was not “Mao's report,” but less than one-third of it.

73 Fairbank, John King, The United States and China. New edition. Completely revised and enlarged (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), p. 233Google Scholar; cf. p. 240 et seq.

74 Ibid. p. 243.

75 On a number of occasions and frequently in connection with the problem of Chinese “Titoism” I have discussed these conflicts (see Wittfogel, Karl A., “How to Checkmate Stalin in Asia,” Commentary [10 1950], p. 338et seq.; Wittfogel 1951, p. 30Google Scholar; Wittfogel, 1954; and idem., “A Stronger Oriental Despotism,” The China Quarterly, 1960, No. 1).Google Scholar

76 This famous statement of Engels appeared in one of the articles that were first printed in the New York Daily Tribune and later published as Revolution and Counterrevolution in Germany, in both cases under Marx's name (Marx-Engels Lenin-Stalin. Zur Deutschen Geschichte, Vol. II [Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1954], p. 448).Google Scholar The correspondence between Marx and Engels shows that the series was actually written by Engels (MEGA III, 1, pp. 229, 236, 241, 242, 244, 259, 261, and passim). The article with the rules for insurrection is probably the one mentioned in Engels' letter of August 2, 1852 (op. cit. p. 365).Google Scholar Lenin, who from 1913 was thoroughly familiar with the Marx-Engels correspondence, disregarded Engels' authorship and ascribed the insurrection formula to Marx (see his article of October 21 (8), 1917, in Lenin. SWG XXI, p. 407 et seq.).