1. Land

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1. Land History

• Pre-Liberation

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Significant environmental influences

• China maps http//www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/china.ht
  ml
• North
• South
• Rivers
• Historical significance of irrigation

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Significance of irrigation Wittfogel
Wittfogel believed that such "hydraulic
civilizations" although neither all in the
Orient nor characteristic of all Oriental
societies were quite different from those of
the West. He believed that wherever irrigation
required substantial and centralized control,
government representatives monopolized political
power and dominated the economy, resulting in an
absolutist managerial state. In addition, there
was a close identification of these officials
with the dominant religion and an atrophy of
other centres of power. The forced labour for
irrigation projects was directed by the
bureaucratic network. Among these hydraulic
civilizations, Wittfogel listed ancient Egypt,
Mesopotamia, India, China and pre-Columbian
Mexico and Peru. http//www.riseofthewest.net/thi
nkers/wittfogel05.htm
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Context

• Where and how did Chinese civilization arise?
• What was the basic structure of traditional
  Chinese society?
• Who was Mao Zedong, and what forces shaped him as
  a young man?
• What was Chinas situation in the first half of
  the 20th century?

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Traditional Chinese social structure

• emperor
• officials/magistrates
• scholar gentry
• clan
• family

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Was traditional China feudal?

• Comparable to Europe in
• landlord/peasant division
• periods of warlords
• imperial order
• strength of tradition
• But
• Some social mobility
• Meritocracy in exam system

7
Who was Mao?

• Son of upwardly mobile middle peasant father and
  Buddhist mother
• Rebellious
• Intellectual
• Marxist

8
Chinas situation first ¼ of 20th century

• Population 94 rural
• Half of land owned by richest 10
• Foreign domination, especially in ports
• KMT and CCP formed
• The White Terror

9
Why Marx?
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Marxism dialectical materialism

• Dialectics (from Hegel)
• Struggle of opposites
• Thesis-antithesis?synthesis
• Materialism (from Epicurus, Feurbach)
• Vs. idealism
• Matter precedes spirit (ideas)
• Society based on economy
• Forces and relations of production

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Marxs Historical Materialism (vulgar version,
based on statements in A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy)
Communism (classless, stateless)
Class struggle is the motor of history
Socialism (dictatorship of the proletariat)
Capitalism (capital vs. labor)
Feudalism (lords vs. peasants
Slavery (masters vs. slaves)
Primitive Communism (classless)
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Basic Marxism

• Modern society is capitalist, based on conflict
  (contradiction) between
• Bourgeoisie (capitalist class)
• Proletariat (working class)
• Capitalists run this world economically,
  politically, and culturally, in the interest of
  expanding and accumulating capital (getting
  richer)

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bourgeois democracy

• Marxist idea that democracy is a political form
  that corresponds well with the development of
  capitalism
• Is bourgeois in the sense that it primarily
  protects property rights laws and ideology favor
  the bourgeoisie
• Mao If anyone asks why a Communist should
  strive to bring into being first a
  bourgeois-democratic society and then a socialist
  society, our answer is we are following the
  inevitable course of history. (http//www.marxist
  s.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-
  2/mswv2_13.htm )

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But why Marx in China?

• Lenin
• Anti-imperialism
• Revolution in weakest link
• Russian revolution
• Base area for others
• Stalin
• Contradictory attitude among Chinese
  intellectuals toward West and modernization
• Mao adapted Marxism to Chinese conditions

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Why not stick with the Guomindang
(nationalists) for the bourgeois stage?

• White Terror showed they were not bourgeois
  democrats
• Mao need stage of New Democracy peoples
  democratic dictatorship
• CPC represents leadership of the proletariat
  (essentially Leninist idea)

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Marxism revolutionary praxis
Revolutionary Theory
Experience
Revolutionary Practice
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Maoism Mass Line
You may ban the expression of wrong ideas, but
the ideas will still be there. On the other hand,
if correct ideas are pampered in hothouses and
never exposed to the elements and immunized
against disease, they will not win out against
erroneous ones. Therefore, it is only by
employing the method of discussion, criticism and
reasoning that we can really foster correct ideas
and overcome wrong ones, and that we can really
settle issues. Mao Zedong, ON THE CORRECT
HANDLING OF CONTRADICTIONS AMONG THE PEOPLE
Party Discussion, criticism, reasoning
Party Cadres
Needs
Policies
Masses Discussion, criticism, reasoning
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Central contradiction facing the Chinese
revolutionaries
Leaders
Masses
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Yanan helps resolve that contradiction