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Revision as of 15:52, 19 June 2025
Mao Zedong 毛泽东 | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born |
December 26th, 1893 Shaoshan, Hunan, Imperial China |
| Died |
September 9th, 1976 Beijing, People's Republic of China |
| Cause of death | Heart attack |
| Nationality | Chinese |
| Ideology |
Marxism–Leninism Mao Zedong Thought |
| Political party | CPC |
Mao Zedong (Chinese: 毛泽东, 26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976)[a] was a Chinese communist politician who acted as Chairman of the Communist Party of China from 1943 until his death in 1976. He is considered the founder of the People's Republic of China and is a core figure in Mao Zedong Thought and Maoism.
During his lifetime, Mao Zedong made large contributions to the body of Marxist thought. These contributions include New Democracy, the Mass Line, and People's War. Chairman Mao also resisted the Soviet Revisionists led by Nikita Khrushchev and later Leonid Brezhnev.
Biography
Early life and education
Mao Zedong was born on December 26, 1893 in the village of Shaoshan, Hunan Province, China.[b] His parents were initially poor peasants but later worked their way up to become middle peasants. Mao was put to work in his family's farmland at the age of 6. At the age of 7, Mao took part in his village's primary school where he became literate, resulting in him later developing an interest in various literally genres. In 1910, he was sent to a higher primary school in Xiangxiang, his mother’s home district.[1]
In 1913, Mao joined the Hunan First Normal College, where he remained between 1913 to 1918. In 1915, Mao became secretary of a students' associated known as the Association for Student Self-Government.
In the summer of 1918, Mao was deeply concerned about his mother’s health as she was recovering from illness at his maternal grandmother’s home. Wanting to help, he obtained a medical prescription and entrusted his uncle to deliver it to her. The following spring, upon returning to Changsha, Mao took his mother to the provincial capital for medical treatment. Despite his efforts, she passed away on October 5, 1919, at the age of 52, due to scrofula. After his mother’s passing, Mao Zedong invited his father, Mao Shunsheng, to stay with him for a time in Changsha. His father no longer interfered with his life but agreed to continued financial support for his schooling. For this, Mao Zedong was grateful to his father, who died from acute typhoid at age 50, on January 23, 1920.
After his mother’s death, Mao moved to Beijing, the capital of China, where for six months he took a very low-paying job as an assistant librarian in Beijing University.
Role in the communist movement
Mao Zedong secured his job with the help of Li Dazhao, the university librarian, who was among the first Chinese intellectuals to commend the Russian Revolution and introduce Marxism to China. Mao Zedong swiftly adopted Marxism under Li Dazhao's influence. By late 1918, he had joined Li's Marxist Study Group and started reading Chinese translations of Lenin's writings. He also made connections with a number of Marxists and intellectuals during this period. Among them was Chen Duxiu, who at the time had a big impact on Mao and would go on to become the first Secretary-General of the Communist Party of China.
In April 1919 Mao returned to Changsha, in World War I, China was one of the victor countries; but, ignoring China’s justified demands for the restoration of privileges and interests snatched from China earlier by the aggressor country, Germany, the Paris Peace Treaty transferred those privileges and interests to Japan. Enraged by the news, the students of Beijing took the lead. On May 4, 1919, they staged a series of large-scale protest demonstrations and mass rallies, known as the May Fourth Movement, Mao immediately became involved in political agitation. He accepted a menial position teaching elementary school, but he spent all of his leisure time planning demonstrations and spreading Marxism. In the New People's Study Society and other student organizations he was active in, he promoted the study of Marxist theory.
Mao also spearheaded a campaign calling for the seizure and incineration of Japanese commodities. He started the Xiang River Review, a weekly publication that quickly rose to prominence in Southern China's student movement. He kept writing for other journals after the publication was outlawed in October 1919. In order to mobilize support for the movement in Hunan, he soon found employment as a journalist for a number of Hunan newspapers and visited important cities like Wuhan, Beijing, and Shanghai.
When Mao landed in Beijing in February 1920, he soon got involved with the plans to build the Communist Party of China. He also met Yang Kaihui the daughter of one of his Changsha College lecturers, who was a professor at Beijing University, who had been studying Marxism. They discussed their dedication to each other and to the revolution. They got engaged. After leaving Beijing, Mao spent four months in Shanghai, China’s largest industrial and commercial hub. There, he engaged in discussions with Chen Duxiu and other Marxists in the city. To sustain himself, he worked as a laborer in a laundry, toiling for 12 to 14 hours a day. During this time, in May 1920, Shanghai became home to China’s first communist group.
When Mao moved backed to Hunan in July 1920, he started working to set up a similar communist group there. His two brothers and adopted sister were among his first recruits. He then moved back to Changsha where he continued recruiting. There he took a job as the director of a primary school and also taught one class at the Normal College for which he received a comfortable salary for the first time. Towards the end of 1920, Mao married Yang Kaihui and they lived together for the one and a half years that Mao was in Changsha as a primary school director. They were regarded as an ideal couple with Yang also being involved with the work of the Party of which she became a member in 1922. They had two sons, one of whom died in 1950 as a volunteer in the Korean War against US imperialism. The other became an accountant. Yang, who performed secret work for the Party, was arrested in 1930 and executed.
Mao went to Shanghai in July 1921 to attend the Communist Party of China's covert First National Congress after founding a communist organization in Hunan. He represented a party that at the time had just 57 members as one of 12 delegates. Mao was named Hunan's Provincial Party Secretary after the Congress.
Mao concentrated on establishing the Hunan Communist Party on Leninist lines from the beginning. He brought in advanced workers through the growing labor movement and enlisted young revolutionaries from already-existing organizations. He started two monthly magazines to promote communist education among the general public in an effort to raise the ideological and political awareness of party and youth league members.
Mao committed himself to organizing laborers in Changsha, the Shuikoushan Lead Mine, and the Anyuan Colliery in neighboring Jiangxi Province between 1921 and 1923. He founded the first trade union with a communist leadership by August 1921. He established the All-China Labour Federation's Hunan chapter in 1922 and served as its chairman. Specifically, the Anyuan Colliery movement was a striking illustration of communist organization in action. Due to missing his appointment, Mao was unable to attend the CPC's Second National Congress in July 1922. He did, however, attend the Third National Congress in June 1923 and was chosen to serve on the Central Committee. This Congress decided to work with Sun Yat-sen's Kuomintang (KMT) to establish a national front against imperialism and feudalism. It told members of the Communist Party to join the KMT on their own. Mao joined the Kuomintang after receiving this order, and at the First and Second National Congresses in 1924 and 1926, he was chosen to serve as an alternate member of the party's Central Executive Committee. He oversaw the KMT's central propaganda division during this time, edited a political weekly, and instructed the sixth grade at the Peasant Movement Institute.
In 1925, people across China were protesting the tragic May 30th massacre, where British police opened fire on demonstrators in Shanghai. This sparked a nationwide movement against imperialism, uniting all kinds of people from different walks of life. China found itself at a important turning point, facing a major showdown between revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries. During this heated period, two distinct factions started to take shape within the Chinese Communist Party (CPC). The larger group, leaning towards the Right and led by Party General Secretary Chen Duxiu, believed that the bourgeoisie should steer the democratic revolution with the goal of setting up a bourgeois republic. He emphasized that the working class should only team up with the bourgeoisie, completely overlooking the possibility of working alongside the peasants.
On the flip side, you had the 'Left' opportunist faction, represented by Zhang Guotao from the All-China Federation of Labour, who was all about focusing on the working-class movement. He thought that the proletariat was strong enough to drive the revolution on their own and also ignored the role of the peasantry. Amid all these discussions, Mao started making his mark on Marxist theory. In March 1926, he released a crucial work titled Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society, followed by his report, An Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, in March 1927. Through these writings, he tackled essential questions about the Chinese revolution: Who were its allies, and who were its adversaries? Who should take the lead, and whom could they count on or distrust?
Mao argued that the leadership role should be taken on by the proletariat instead of the bourgeoisie. However, he stressed that the working class could not achieve victory by itself—it an needed to ally with the peasantry, which was the largest and most important ally for the workers. He also looked closely at the national bourgeoisie, noting that while the right-wing elements might turn against the revolution, there were still left-wing members who could remain supportive. What's more, Mao laid out strategies for rallying the masses, forming a revolutionary government, and setting up armed forces made up of peasants—offering a clear path for revolution.
During this time the Northern Expedition, a pivotal phase in the First Revolutionary Civil War of China—the first stage of the Chinese Revolution was happening. Led by the Revolutionary Army under the Kuomintang-CPC united front, the expedition began in July 1926 in Guangdong, southern China. Its objective was to dismantle the reactionary government of the imperialist-supported Northern warlords and to fight for China’s independence and unity. The Northern Expedition saw significant success, with southern China largely freed from the control of warlords, many of whom either surrendered or were persuaded to join the revolutionary cause. Notably, even Shanghai, the country’s largest industrial and commercial hub, was liberated in March 1927, following three failed attempts at armed uprisings by workers.
After achieving significant victories, however, the bourgeois faction, led by Chiang Kai-shek (who became the main leader of the Kuomintang after Sun Yat-sen’s death in 1925), shattered the united front. In April 1927, massacres supported by the imperialists were carried out against communist cadres across various regions of the country. The right-wing opportunist leadership of the CPC under Chen Duxiu, instead of rallying the workers and peasants to oppose the Kuomintang reactionaries, capitulated to them. In July 1927, another faction of the Kuomintang initiated further massacres against the communists. This led to the collapse of the united front and the defeat of the First Revolutionary Civil War.
In August 1927, at the beginning of the Second Revolutionary Civil War Period and Nanchang Uprising, Chen Duxiu was removed as General Secretary after a strong critique of his right-wing opportunism. Mao was reinstated to the Central Committee and made an alternate member of the Provisional Politburo that was established. However, the correct criticism of the rightist line in November 1927 was the dominance of a “Left” line within the Central Committee, led by Qu Qiubai, an intellectual comrade who had returned after studying in the Soviet Union. This line wrongly assessed that the Chinese revolution was experiencing a “continuous upsurge” and thus called for armed uprisings in multiple cities. The leadership criticized Mao for leading a peasant uprising and opposing uprisings in larger cities. As a result, he was once again removed from his central positions and stripped of his membership in the Hunan Provincial Committee. The “Left” line resulted in significant losses and was abandoned by April 1928.
The Sixth Congress of the CPC, held in Moscow in June 1928, corrected the first “Left” line and adopted a fundamentally correct understanding, rejecting both the Right and “Left” positions. Although Mao did not attend the Congress, it largely supported his views on many issues. In his absence, he was once again elected to the Central Committee.
However, “Left” ideas began to regain influence, and by 1930, they had taken over the Party leadership. Two “Left” lines, led by Li Lisan in 1930 and Wang Ming from 1931 to 1934, dominated the Party and caused significant harm. In June 1930, Li Lisan proposed a plan to organize armed uprisings in major cities across the country and to concentrate all Red Army units to attack these cities. Under the control of the Party and Red Army, the Wang Ming clique made numerous errors, leading to devastating losses.
The Long March
Due to encirclement campaigns by the Kuomingtang and the clear failure of the left opportunist faction who was in charge at the time, the CPC went with Mao's idea of a tactical retreat, known as the Long March. In January, 1934, the Second All-China Congress of Soviets was convened in Juichin, and a survey of the achievements of the revolution took place. And here the Central Soviet Government, as its personnel exists today, was elected. Preparations soon afterwards were made for the Long March.
The Long March began on, October, 1934. By January 1935 the CPC reached Zunyi where a confrence later happened where Mao Zedong gained effective leadership of the CPC. During the march through Kiangsi, Kwangtung, Kwangsi, and Hunan, the Reds suffered very heavy losses. Their numbers were reduced by about one-third by the time they reached the border of Kweichow province.
By the 19th of October, 1935 the CPC had reached Shanxi and reorganized with fellow comrades in Shanxi, where they started to recover from the Long March.
Role in the Second Sino-Japanese War
Japanese militarists on July 7, 1937, provoked an “incident” in Liukouchiao. Unlike Japan, China was unprepared for total war and had little military-industrial strength, no mechanized divisions, and few armored forces. Japan then used this as an excuse to perform a full scale invasion of China, the battle of Battle of Beiping–Tianjin then happened where Beijing would be captured. The Japanese command had at the moment concentrated vast naval, air and land forces in the Yangtze River valley in an effort to reach Hankow by river from the southeast.
The CPC along with the Kuomintang temporarily allied against the Japanese invaders forming the Second-United Front, due to the war many volunteers joined the CPC against the invaders, one of many contributions made by the CPC during the invasion was, proposing a number of definite measures for strengthening the unified Chinese army. It proposed that a political department be organized attached to the general staff of the Chinese army; it actively helped to introduce universal military service and developed a widespread anti-Japanese movement among the masses of the people. The Communist Party proclaimed that it was ready to render every help to the government to set up a defense industry in China.
On the 9th of August, 1945. Soviet forces declared war on the Japanese invaders and invaded Manchuria, significantly aiding in the war for National Liberation, Mao even proclaimed in one of his works that, “A new stage in China's war of national liberation has arrived, and the people of the whole country must strengthen their unity and struggle for final victory.”
Continuation of the Chinese Civil War
Shortly after the end of the Second-Sino Japanese War, the Kuomintang and various warlords provoked the CPC into war, 29) the Nationalist government after the war was demoralized and unpopular reactionaries indistinguishable from war lords of the past, and it wasn't even a reliable ally against the Japanese invaders.
The Soviets transferred the occupied territory in Manchuria to the Chinese Communists, the Soviets also gave the CPC a lot of captured Japanese Imperial weapons, On 20 July 1946, Chiang Kai-shek launched a large-scale assault on Communist territory in North China with 113 brigades (a total of 1.6 million troops).
However the Nationalists were incompetent and had a very corrupt and stubborn military, in the early summer of 1947. The Communists had just begun their first counteroffensive, by autumn of 1948 the People’s Liberation Army was ready to take the cities. The Manchurian harvests were good. The surprise encirclements had worn down Chiang’s armies and netted most excellent American weapons for the victors. The cities, shut off by the peasants, were hungry. So the campaign began. Cities began to be liberated such as, Tsinan, Changchun, Mukden, then Hsuchow, which gave a clear way to capture Nanking.
Beijing would also be liberated in early 1949, Nanking would also be liberated in April of 1949. 33) On October 1st, 1949, the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China was established. Earlier, the first plenary session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference was held from September 21 to 30. At 3 p.m., the ceremony to celebrate the founding of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China was held in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Chairman Mao Zedong announced the establishment of the Central People's Government. After that, a grand military parade and mass parade was held.
Legacy
Criticism
Mao Zedong and the CPC more broadly have been criticized by some anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninists, particular those who follow the line of Enver Hoxha, for multiple reasons, including alleged class collaboration. Hoxha himself did not characterize the Chinese revolution as socialist, but bourgeois.[2]
See also
Bibliography
The following are works by Mao Zedong available on the Revolupedia library.
References
- ↑ Marxism–Leninism–Maoism Basic Course.
- ↑ Enver Hoxha (1979). Can the Chinese Revolution be called a Proletarian Revolution?. November 8th Publishing House.
Notes
- ↑ Alternatively romanized Mao Tse-Tung.
- ↑ China at this time was ruled by the Qing Dynasty.