> On May 30, 2008, at 8:49 AM, Ted Winslow wrote:
>
>> The implicit assumption here is that peasant individuality can be
>> significantly altered in a positive way by "speak bitterness" sessions
>> created not by peasants themselves but by others with the despotic
>> power required to change conditions in this and other ways e.g. to
>> impose "collectivization."
>>
>> What evidence is there that this assumption is true?
>
> The subsequent history of China suggests that it's not. What Mao and
> his comrades created was an effective authoritarian state that has
> proved quite skilled at managing a transition to capitalism. If the
> revolution had had more of a popular base, would it have been as
> trauma-free a transition as it's been?
>
> Or could it be that Maoism didn't provide the Chinese masses much
> that they thought was worth defending? I don't know the answer to
> that, but it's an interesting question.
========================
My sense is that Maoism did provide the Chinese masses with much they
thought was worth defending - ie. land reform, the iron rice bowl and other
social programs, and the reclamation of Chinese national independence -
although popular confidence in the regime could periodically be shaken by
disruptive events like the cultural revolution and great leap forward. Such
support, it seems to me, explains why the Chinese CP was careful to claim
continuity rather than an open break with Mao in undertaking the reforms
which gradually moved the country towards capitalism in subsequent decades.
As in the USSR, nationalism as much as the defence of the social gains won in revolution bound the masses to the regime and won their support for the suppression of dissent, consistently portrayed as the product of imperialist or Soviet "revisionist" intrigue rather than as a legitimate response to domestic conditions. The appearance of open dissent in Tienamen Square only became possible once China's foreign policy and internal discipline were relaxed under Deng.
I think the government, with the support of a large part of the population whose living standards have been improving even as inequality has been widening, still believes it is building on, rather than dismantling, the accomplishments of 1949 and pursuing "socialism with Chinese characteristics". It's remarkable how elastic definitions can become in the service of different purposes.