Mao’s approach to political leadership as a revolutionary was summed up in the phrase, “Correct leadership must come from the masses and go to the masses.” What was Mao’s philosophy of how to lead a revolution, before and after 1949?

Initially a radical revolutionary then a committed Marxist, Mao’s philosophy on how to lead a revolution was bathed in Nationalism. It is Mao’s love for China’s independence coupled with agrarian reforms that put Mao on the road to power. After 1949, Nationalism would reappear in Mao’s cultural policies, his relationship with Moscow and underdeveloped countries.

Mao feared nothing and no one. Using Marxism-Leninism as a framework, Mao proposed the use of peasants to create his revolutionary elite. His innovative thinking was unpopular among many of Mao’s Communist comrades; they believed the proletariat to be the key group (Cheek, 11). Mao also championed women’s liberation from masculine authority of husbands as well as clan, temple, and general religious oppression (Cheek, 11) also unacceptable position for a Communist to take.

Mao’s breakdown of the rural classes into poor, middle and rich peasants demonstrated the Nationalist impulse rooted in his personality. His attachment to China led him to cooperate with the Guomindang, a nationalist group (Cheek, 10) and in the resistance war against Japan guided Mao to power (Cheek, 13).

After standing up to his abusive father Mao said, “…I learned that when I defend my rights by open rebellion my father relented, but when I remained meek and submissive he only cursed and beat me the more” (Cheek, 1). During an interview with Snow, Mao adds, at the same time it probably benefited me. It made me most diligent in my work; it made me keep my books carefully, so that he should have no basis for criticizing me (Snow/Cheek, 191). It would be this kind of opposition that set Mao’s revolutionary thinking into motion ultimately positioning him as a dominate power.

Mao Zedong’s political attitudes took shape during a time when China was socially, economically and politically in profound crisis. The country was weak and divided. China in the 1910s and 1920s was in trouble. Politically, economically and socially, it was on the verge of utter collapse – or at least appeared to be so (Cheek, 2). China’s major problems were reunification and expulsion of foreign occupiers. China failed miserably in its attempt to turn a dynastic empire into a nation-state run as a constitutional republic. Socially, the links between scholars and the state and between scholarly-gentry families and farming communities had been broken, leaving the government to fools and villains and the rural order to thugs (Cheek, 7).

When China’s first warlord, Yuan Shikai forced Nationalist party leader, Yat-sen to quickly retire, China fell into what Mao describes as a semi-feudal, semi-colonial conditions controlled by a motley crew of militarists and foreign powers (Cheek, 9).

As a young man, Mao embraced Nationalism. His love for the peasants and poor who resided in rural China directed many of Mao’s actions. In the 1930s, Mao was engaged in constant warfare - defending his rural “people’s soviet” from local bandits or from the government troops of the GMD, and later resisting the Japanese invasion of China (Cheek, 29).
Mao ingested essays and magazines written by the New Cultural Movement especially works penned by Liang Qichao. Chen Duxiu’s radical New Youth journal was a required read (Cheek, 9). Further fueling his desire to free China from western liberal ideals and imperialism.

In the 1920s, as the CCP began to take shape, Mao participated in regional study groups (Cheek, 10). The Soviet Union’s involvement with the group brought Marxism-Leninisn ideology to China’s doorstep. There was an immediate conflict. The Soviet Union’s focus on the proletariat or the industrial working class was almost non-existent in China. The Soviet’s state policy also conflicted with China’s ideological program (Cheek, 10).

After Yat-sen died and Chiang Kai-shek surprise turn on the CCP, Mao immediately stepped up to fill the void. Mao began to mobilize the peasants and the poor through the rural areas in China. Mao believed that if China was to emerge as a world power the foundation building must begin at the bottom with China’s peasants and poor people. Mao traveled extensively throughout the country-side to capture, first hand, his account about the peasant movement. In Mao’s report on the Peasant Movement in Hunan he describes the organizing and rising of the peasants. Mao stated that the upsurge of the peasant movement was a colossal event (Cheek, Mao, 42).

Mao methodically charts the progresses being made by the peasants as they break away from the harsh and inhumane treatment of the evil landlords. Peasants create peasant associations (Cheek, 54), political structures are changed or destroyed by the peasants (Cheek, 55), military groups are established and landlord armed forces are overthrown (Cheek, 59), religious groups/clans/ancestral temples are overthrown and education is instituted are among the changes peasants make while organizing themselves (Cheek, 72). Completely contradicting the beliefs of their critics.

Mao strayed away from the traditional Marxist belief that the proletariat drives the revolution. He strategically positioned the peasants and the poor to lead the new revolution. Marxist tradition regarded peasants incapable of revolution. In the peasants Mao saw great potential. Mao believed their raw energy of strength and violence was naturally inherent. Mao sought out to instill in them a proletarian consciousness through sinification. Mao adapted Communist ideology and Marxism-Leninism and integrated it into Chinese society and thought (Cheek, 197).

Mao envisioned a new governmental structure. He outlined the new structure in On New Democracy. This was Mao’s opportunity to place himself and the CCP in the forefront of China’s history. Mao boldly proclaims that China’s future involves new politics, a new economy and more importantly a new culture (Cheek, Mao, 79).

In this document Mao chronicles China’s checkered past. He explains China’s revolution must be divided into two parts democracy and socialism. The first step change China’s societal structure. No longer can China operate under the colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal form of society that exists throughout the country (Cheek, Mao, 81). The Opium War sets this first step in motion. China’s society starts shifting from feudal to semi-colonial and semi-feudal (Cheek, Mao, 81). The century of wars to follow represent the Chinese people’s struggle for an independent, democratic society (Cheek, Mao, 82).

Mao set out to clearly define his position about the thesis, “the Chinese revolution is part of the world revolution” (Cheek, Mao, 83). Instead of a bourgeois world revolution, Mao saw a new socialist revolution – one that involved all factions of the society vehemently opposed to imperialism (Cheek, Mao, 86). With no dominant proletarian group in China, Mao puts his plan of establishing a new-democratic society under joint dictatorship of all revolutionary classes of China into motion. Mao believed this revolution could be carried forward into the second stage, in which a socialist society would be established in China (Cheek, Mao, 86). Mao’s clever use of rhetoric and propaganda such as the Three People’s Principles, Marxism and Stalinism strengthened the peasant and poor people’s revolution. Mao’s goal was to rid China of imperialism and feudalism to create a new-democratic Republic of China (Cheek, Mao, 112).

The first seven years of CCP had gone well, and Mao was the revered leader of the nation (Cheek, 128). Nonetheless trouble was brewing. Mao feared that De-Stalinization in the USSR and anti-soviet rebellions in Communist Poland and Hungary caused the CCP to succumb to bureaucatism (Cheek, 128).

Mao had now become President of the People’s Republic of China and governed China as a virtual dictator. He desired to establish communist rule throughout China and bring about land reform. Although Mao was a revolutionary, in many ways he was still a very traditional Chinese. He continued to rely on the peasants, who had been his main supporters of the CCP. People began to criticize Mao’s approach.
After 1949, Mao’s actions exhibit very little concern for proper Marxism (Cheek, Mao, 160). Mao’s speech, “Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom, Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend” describes his policy for promoting progress in the arts and sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land (Cheek, Mao, 150). Having called upon the intellectuals but found them wanting. Mao next turned to China’s farming masses. In 1958, Mao declared The Great Leap Forward to complete China’s two core tasks – finishing the socialist revolution to reach communism and achieving full economic development (Cheek, 24).

Mao’s agricultural and industrial program did not have the success he expected. He urged to construct backyard steel furnaces to gain the Western steel production. This unrealistic project was not without a certain good will, although results were tragic: about 30 million people died in the famine, when ill-trained peasants were forced to carry out the gigantic industrialization plan.

Following the disaster of the Great Leap Forward, Mao relinquished his position as head of the state; Liu Shao-Chi became the new leader of PRC. Mao did however remain chairman concentrating his efforts on ideological changes. The debate over which group reigned supreme; peasants or proletariats set the Cultural Revolution into motion. Mao mobilized inexperienced youth (Red Guards) from urban and rural areas to force bureaucrats, professors, technicians, intellectuals, and other non-peasants into rural work. Mao convinced the young militants that their revolution was in danger and told them they must do all they could to stop the emergence of a privileged class in China. Mao argument was based on what occurred under Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Union. Tens of thousands were murdered or forced to give up their jobs.

Certainly, his fierce nationalism and faith in China’s ordinary people, his focus on the farmers, and his fearless willingness to experiment will likely find a ready audience in the China to come (Cheek, 36).

"A revolution is not the same as inviting people to dinner, or writing as essay, or painting a picture... A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another." Mao Zedong