Mao Zedong
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 |
Mao Zedong Thought Chinese nationalism Revisionism |
| Political party | CPC |
Mao Zedong (Chinese: 毛泽东, 26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976)[a] was a Chinese nationalist, revisionist, and bourgeois revolutionary who founded and ruled the People's Republic of China until his death.
Although his initial leadership over the Chinese revolutionary movement was progressive as he opposed Japanese imperialism and the reactionary Guomindang, he soon adopted opportunist positions after the death of Stalin in 1953. After the rise of revisionism in the Soviet Union and other countries in the succeeding years, Mao Zedong did not oppose revisionism but instead introduced his own competing variety of it — Mao Zedong Thought, which would later develop into Maoism.
After introducing the class collaborationist policy of New Democracy during the 1950s and omitting the leading rule of the proletariat in the party,[1] Mao would begin to enact many failed policies which reflected his anti-Marxist and petite-bourgeois stances, namely the Great Leap Forward.[2] In the 1960s, another revisionist faction began to gain influence in the communist party, leading to Mao initiating and heading a vast political purge known erroneously in his propaganda as the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" in 1966.
After liquidating the party and government by the end of the 1960s, Mao would soon adopt even more opportunistic stances, particularly with regard to the "Three Worlds Theory," which provided the ideological justification to openly ally with imperialist powers such as the United States against the social-imperialist Soviet Union. Mao died in 1976 after his heath had been increasingly moribund during the proceeding months. His demise resulted in a power struggle between the "Gang of Four" and explicitly capitalist faction under Deng Xiaoping.
Mao Zedong is remembered by the revolutionary communist movement as being one of the leading figures of modern revisionism who prevented China from attaining socialism. His eclectic views and policies directly resulted in the rise of Deng and the eventual transformation of China into the social-imperialist power it is in the present.
See also
Further reading
References
- ↑ Jim Washington (1979). Socialism Cannot be Built in Alliance with the Bourgeoisie. November 8th Publishing House.
- ↑ Mao Zedong (1959). Responsibility for the Great Leap Forward.
Notes
- ↑ Alternatively romanized Mao Tse-Tung.