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Mao Tse-Tung Chinese-Political Philosopher (1893-1976)
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Mao Tse-TungChinese-Political Philosopher (1893-1976)Independent of Mao’s shortcomings as a philosopher, the reader must remember that he helped mobilize the Chinese people, and helped shape the Red Army without which the 1949 revolution would not have transpired. He pushed out the Kuomintang, defeated the Japanese in various encounters and got rid of the imperialists. He helped the people get rice and cooking oil, shelter, clothing, fuel, vastly improved hygiene and medicine, and began the long struggle to wipe out illiteracy. In an attempt to explain Mao’s work, this biography will examine: (1) History and Background of Mao, (2) his notion of the power of the masses, (3) strategy for revolution, (4) value practicality, and (5) usefulness to debate. Mao’s father was a poor peasant which forced Mao to join the army because of heavy debts. After his tenure in the army, Mao was able to save and buy back his land. Traditionally, the people of Hunan were known as rebels and bandits. Uprisings were savagely repressed by the local bureaucrats. For example, when he was at school, Mao saw the decapitated heads of peasant rebels stuck up on the city gates as a warning. They had led starving peasants to find food. This experience impacted Mao who deeply resented the injustice of the treatment given to them. Derived from his interest in issues of justice and morality, Mao read Adam Smith, Darwin, John Stuart Mill, Rousseau, ancient Greek Philosophy, Spinoza, Kant and Goethe. Moreover, his reading of socialists was limited to Karl Kantsky’s Class Struggle and Marx and Engel’s Communist Manifesto.
Chinese people possessed great intrinsic energy. The more profound the oppression, the greater the resistance. Moreover, out of oppression will come a rapid and violent revolution. This was evident during early meetings with the Chinese Communist Party. Party leaders argued that the revolution should be centered in the cities and led by the elite. Mao disagreed with the Russian model and argued that it should center in the country by the masses. The reliance on the masses is the crucial difference between Soviet Marxism and Maoism. For Mao, the power was and should be in the individual peasant. In addition, Mao believed that Marxism-Leninism was religious dogma that was too abstract, providing no insight into how to feed and clothe the populace. Mao’s Red Army used Guerrilla tactics summed up by five requirements: (1) Support from the masses; (2) Party organization; (3) Strong guerrilla army; (4) Favorable region for military moves; and (5) Economic Self-Sufficiency. Mao further argued that if the Chinese wanted socialism, they would have to fight for it. Socialism does not come naturally. There must be revolution on the political, ideological, and cultural fronts--not just the economic. Revolution must be uninterrupted. Mao noted that Marxism consists of thousand of truths, but they all boil down to the one sentence, “it is right to rebel.” Mao contended that Chinese rulers had been given the power to oppress for thousands of years. For Mao theory was inferior to practice. He is most enthusiastic about the practice of Lenin and Stalin. Moreover, the end of all knowledge and perception was practice. That is, Mao saw cognition as a series of separate steps. First there was perceptual knowledge, then a leap into rational knowledge, followed by a leap into practice. Probably Mao’s greatest usefulness for the debater lies in his integration of Marxism. The debater can use Mao to support socialism and communism. However, there is one crucial difference the debater must realize: Mao sees communism at the grass-roots level. Instead of a strong central government, Mao embraces a people’s government. Hence, the debater could use Mao to develop a unique communist perspective. Moreover, Maoism provides an interesting avenue to support the value of freedom. Because Mao believes in a complete revolution that embraces freedom, his perspective will provide much support for a “comprehensive” and “thorough” conception of freedom. Finally, Maoism assumes that values are/should be concerned with action. Hence, a debater will he able to use Maoism to challenge any position that suggests values can be discussed independent of action. Overall, Mao Tse-tung’s influence on the political, ideological and cultural aspects of China cannot he overemphasized. As suggested previously, Mao’s philosophy is an intensely practical model that focuses on emancipating the peasants from oppression. BibliographyJerome Chen. MAO. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969. Yung-Ping Chen. CHINESE POLITICAL THOUGHT: MAO TSE-TUNG AND LIU SHAO-CHI. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971. Arthur A. Cohen. THE COMMUNISM OF MAO TSE-TUNG. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1964. William T. DeBary, Chan Wing-tsit, & C. Tan. SOURCES OF CHINESE TRADITION, VOLUME II. New York: Columbia, 1964. H.C. d'EnCausse & Stuart Schram. Marxism And Asia. London: Penguin, 1969. T. Pang. ‘The World And The Individual In Chinese Metaphysics, In C.A. Moore, Ed., THE CHINESE MIND. Honolulu: East-West Center, 1967. John C. Gurley. CHINA’S ECONOMY AND THE MAOIST STRATEGY. New York: Monthly Review Press. 1976. Maurice J. Mcisner. MARXISM, MAOISM 7 UTOPIANISM: EIGHT ESSAYS, Madison. WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982. S.J. 0. Brier, FIFTY YEARS OF CHINESE PHILOSOPHY, 1898-1948, trans. L.G. Thompson. New York: Praeger, 1965. S. Schram, MAO TSE-TUNG. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966. Benjamin Isadore Schwartz. CHINESE COMMUNISM AND THE RISE OF MAO. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951. E. Snow. RED STAR OVER CHINA. New York: Grove, 1961. Mao Tse-Tung. FOUR ESSAYS ON PHILOSOPHY. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1968. Mao Tse-Tung. MORE POEMS OF MAO TSE-TUNG. trans. Wong Man. Hong Kong: Eastern Horizon, 1967. Mao Tse-Tung. POEMS OF MAO TSE-TUNG. trans. Wong Man. Hong Kong: Eastern Horizon. 1966. Mao Tse-Tung. ON COALITION GOVERNMENT. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967. Mao Tse-Tung. ON NEW DEMOCRACY. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1954. Mao Tse-Tung. QUOTATIONS FROM CHAIRMAN MAO TSE-TUNG. Peking: Foreign Languages Press. Mao Tse-Tung. SELECTED WORKS OF MAO TSE-TUNG. VOLUME ONE 1926-1936. New York: International Publishers, 1954. 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