S04: Red Star Rising

• How was the Chinese Communist Party founded? Role of intellectuals
• How did protracted warfare change the CCP? From anarchist society to Leninist party
• How did China change communism? From urban insurrection to rural revolution

Small group discussion:

• Form groups of 2-3
• Review Cheek chapter “Revolution: Awakening China”

Questions:

• Who was writing? How did his/her life shape the ideas?
• What is the author arguing? What are the counter-arguments?
• What is your view on the matter?
• Why were people arguing? What’s at stake? Is the debate still relevant?

• Not just complete Westernization, but restructuring and reinterpretation of Chinese tradition
• Scientific method: Western import or timeless, universal ideal also practiced in China’s traditional culture?

• Writing China as part of world history
• Indigenous roots of scientific research: History of philosophical syncretism
• Cultural parallels between China and the West
• Historical investigation of folklore, literature, anthropology, archaeology
• Enduring moral idealism of educated elites: administrator and educator

• Why does the Chinese Communist Party make a point of celebrating China’s most famous protest movement?
• What do people remember when they remember May Fourth?

Liberal / Progressive

• Emphasis on education, individual autonomy, and active citizenship.

Cynical / Critical

• The utopian vision of “new citizens” or a “new culture” never affected reality in the political system.
• This movement discarded China’s Confucian heritage and led to utopianism and radicalism.

• Anti-imperial and patriotic movement, driven by national spirit
• Young generation encouraged to join effort in achieving the Chinese dream and the great rejuvenation of the nation

• Tang ping: online meme that arose in April 2021 as an informal social movement
• Personal rejection of societal pressures to overwork and over-achieve
• Part of a global trend? “quiet quitting”

• CCP First National Congress in Shanghai in June, 1921
• Chen Duxiu, party secretary, absent
• Mao Zedong – one of the two representatives from Changsha – presented as party leader

• Secrecy and censorship: Who disappeared from view?
• Soviet copycat vs. Indigenous development: What is socialism with “Chinese characteristics”?
• “Only the CCP can save China…”: Was the CCP destined to lead?
• “The end of history”: Was communism doomed to fail?

Key dates:

• 1921-07: Founding of the CCP
• 1923-1927: First United Front
• 1931-1934: Jiangxi Soviet
• 1934-1936: Long March
• 1937-1941: Second United Front
• 1945-1949: Chinese Civil War
• 1949-10: Founding of the People’s Republic of China

Key transitions:

• From study societies to political party
• From loose network to Leninist organization
• From urban proletariat to rural peasantry
• From mass mobilization to militarization
• From democratic centralism to charismatic rule
• From underground party to governing regime

• What is the meaning of Allied victory in WWI for China?
• What is Bolshevism, according to Li Dazhao?
• What does a Bolshevik state look like, and how will it be created?

• Each system contained a ruling class.
• The ruling class’s position was derived primarily from controlling the economic surplus.
• Dominant ideas and institutions were those that accorded with the interests of that class.

• The value of a product was determined by the amount of labour that had been necessary to produce it.
• Pre-capitalist society: Exchange value = Use value
• Under capitalism: The point was to produce commodities which could be exchanged for money and profit.
• Marx: it was not labor that created value but labor power.

Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

• Constant capital vs. Variable capital (labor power) changed value.
• Capitalists purchase “labor power” (a worker’s capacity to work) but pay the worker less than the value they create through their labor.
• Surplus value as profit: Difference between the value a worker creates through their labor and the wages they receive.

Alienation is the objective structure of experience and activity in capitalist society:

• From the product of labor
• From the activity of labor
• From one’s own specific humanity
• From others, from society.

What is it not?

• Not just a subjective feeling of being without control.
• One can undergo it without being aware of it.
• The only way to get rid of alienation would be to get rid of the basic structure of separation of the producers from the means of production.

• Those who owned the means of production (for example, factories) sought profit by producing commodities for sale in the market.
• The fundamental economic struggle between labour and capital was over the rate of surplus value (which Marx also called the ‘rate of exploitation’).
• Owners of the means of production wanting to increase it, while workers to reduce it through higher wages.
• The consequences of this conflict meant that the capitalist system was prone to crisis.

• The seeds of transformation were inherent within the operation of the existing system, which was never static.
• But not everything is determined by antagonistic structural forces.
• Political consciousness and activity by the proletariat also essential.
• Revolutionary crisis was the culmination of a much longer evolutionary process within the existing society.

• Radical tradition, but not exactly intellectual fringe
• First generation of intellectuals to introduce Marxism to China
• Critique of authority and China’s cultural tradition
• Later anarchists critiqued proletarian hegemony – and criticized by the party for naive idealism

• What should women know about communism?
• What is the relationship between female liberation and nationalist movement?
• What about men?

Communism:

• Stateless and classless society without private property
• Each person works and is paid to their abilities and needs
• Umbrella term encompassing a variety of ideologies

Socialism:

• A period of transition, a step from lower to higher social order
• Means of production increasingly owned or controlled by the state for the benefit of all
• Proletariats – often represented by a socialist party – in interim dictatorship

• Marxism as a viable belief system and displacement of other radical ideas (anarchism, etc.)
• From theoretical debates to political activism (labor movements, etc.)
• From interpersonal relations to pre-eminence of organizational discipline

• Pingxiang County in Jiangxi: Geographically and culturally closer to Hunan province (home province of Mao) than to its own province of Jiangxi.
• Predominantly agricultural, but developed Anyuan mine after discovery of high quality coal suitable for steamships and heavy industry in the 19th century.
• By 1909, Anyuan became the largest Chinese-owned coal mine: by 1911, it produced over 2,200 tons daily.

• Stark differences between the wealthy and the poor, and the division between underground and aboveground work, fostered a Manichean mentality.
• Miners prayed to a bodhisattva statue before going underground for protection.
• Large-scale collective exorcism rituals, featuring a statue of the Daoist Celestial Master Xu, were an important form of religious observance.

• The Elder Brothers Society, also known as the Red Gang, was the dominant power holder in Anyuan.
• Religion and recreation were closely linked, with exorcist dancers providing both entertainment and perceived curative benefits.
• Besides the Red Gang, other influential institutions included government agencies, chambers of commerce, lineage halls, temples, churches, and schools.

• How did the Communists get ordinary Chinese to understand, accept, and embrace revolutionary authority?
• More specifically, How did the intellectuals who founded the CCP manage to cultivate a large and loyal following among illiterate and impoverished peasants and workers?

• The Communists’ success in Anyuan stemmed from their effective use of elite social capital.
• The educated Communists leveraged their academic credentials and connections, drawing on the respect for Confucian scholars.
• They initially entered Anyuan society as teachers, which allowed them to transform it fundamentally.
• The belief that all humans are educable and that the intelligentsia should provide moral instruction was ingrained in Chinese thought.
• Despite end to imperial exam, intellectual belief in the responsibility for moral cultivation.

• The party as absolute power center: “the party-state”
• Vanguard party: most ideologically enlightened and practically devoted few of the society
• “Democratic centralism”: combining free discussion with central control; binding party line and discipline for all members
• Substitute for the class: loyalty to class become loyalty to the party

• Tactic approved by the CCP’s third party congress (1923)
• A bloc within the Nationalist Party
• CCP members joining the GMD while retaining CCP membership

• The Anyuan experiment ended in the fall of 1925, amid Nationalist crackdown.
• The CCP shifted from transparency to secrecy and emphasized class struggle, shifting from workers’ education to armed class struggle.
• Landlords and lineage elders retaliated, attacking Communist headquarters in Anyuan and killing or arresting activists.
• The Red Terror subsided with Chiang Kai-shek’s coup in Shanghai in April 1927, leading to a “White Terror” backlash.

• Strike triggered by killing of Chinese worker by Japanese factory manager
• Protest suppressed by British police in Shanghai
• A new crossroad: conservative loyalism or revolutionary radicalism?

CCP membership change: