First published in the monthly THE CONCEPT, Islamabad, April 20- May 19, 1981 issue

Note: Nowadays Mao-tse-Tung is written as Mao Zedong and Peking as Beijing

People may have forgotten that China’s rise as an economic and military power was the result of Mao’s leadership. This book review, written 45 years ago, can perhaps be of interest in this regard.

Mao-tse-Tung was the last of the titans of the twentieth century. Dick Wilson’s book, published recently, is the first complete biography of Mao covering his entire career from his humble peasant beginnings in Hunan to his globally noted death in the gate of Heavenly Peace in Peking. The book gives a fluent account of his formative student days, of the dogged passion with which he clung to the masses once in the political arena, of the intra-party strifes that developed as the revolution moved forward, and of his daring experiments while in power, experiments almost always resisted by major sections of the party. Dick Wilson’s biography surpasses earlier biographies of Mao not merely in itys completeness but also, at many points, in the lucidity and clarity of its grasp of Mao’s mighty and lonely quest for power. With power Mao relentlessly hammered the ponderous feudal order to pieces thrusting China into an egalitarian era and transforming it into a global force to be reckoned with.

Mao was born in a peasant family in a village Shaoshan, in the province of Hunan in the year 1893. His mother was a devout Buddhist, liked in the village, and also by Mao, for her kindness, affection and altruism. His father was a forceful industrious man characterised by a strongly selfish streak – Mao never got to like him. He displayed signs of disobedience and rebellion, unusual in the then Chinese society, whenever he felt unjustly treated by his father or by his teachers. He seems to have grasped early, and clearly, that one must assert one’s self and fight for one’s right. Even as a child Mao seems to have possessed a stubborn nature. He also displayed a great zest for learning and at the age of 18, having completed primary education, found himself a place in a secondary school in a big city, Changsha, after not only persuading a reluctant father to allow him to pursue studies but also thrusting himself on an unfavorably disposed headmaster. At Changsha he seems to have caught the eyes of his teachers and won the respect of fellow students. He displayed a flair for leadership which was manifest in his sense of independence, in his tendency to assert himself against teachers for the defense of student rights, in his experiments with organizing student groups for discussions, cultivation of camaraderie, courage and physical culture. Knowing full well the bitterness of poverty, growing up at a time when China was being humiliated by foreign powers, and when the masses were pent up with suffering, Mao, like other young people in China, was haunted by the question of how to set China on the road to power and prosperity. With confident aspirations and budding ambitions he finished school at 24 (in 1917) a committed nationalist, but still a non-Marxist, on the look-out for a way.  As he wrote later “Society pushed men like us on the political stage. Who would have thought of promoting Marxism? We had never heard of it. What we had read about was Confucius, Napoleon, Washington, Peter the Great ….”.

From native Hunan Mao went down to Peking where he worked for a year as a library assistant in Peking University. It was here that he received his first exposure to Marxism and got converted. Marxism was the tool with China must be transformed. Here he also met first wife, later executed by Chiang Kai-Shek. In Peking Mao encountered intellectual snobbery – “no one had time to listen to a young man speaking in Southern dialect.” He noted the isolation of the intelligentsia from the common man. He never lost his, not unreasonable, contempt for white collar intellectuals. “All wisdom comes from the masses. I have always said that it is the intellectuals who are the most ignorant. This is the heart of the matter.” Here in Peking he came into contact with other young men in search of a way to transform China. The earnestness with which these young men prepared themselves for playing a role in transforming China is surprising – they read vivaciously, toughened their bodies, organized discussions and attempted to observe and understand the conditions of the masses. (One might wonder if today similar bands of  youth are busy preparing themselves for similar roles in the Afro-Asian world!). Evetually Mao found a job in native Changsha as a primary school teacher in 1919. It was here that he started studying the conditions of the poor around him seriously – the factory workers, the miners, the beggars, the thieves. Soon he set down to fighting for the rights of the poor, an although he was a Marxist by now, his understanding of Marxism, and of the temper and feeling of the masses, actually developed in the process of practical politics. Hence his emphasis on practice and contempt for the doctrinaire and dogmatic – “Dogma is less useful than cow-dung” he remarked much later in life, in 1965, to Andre Malraux the French Cultural Minister. He pursued the rights of workers with astonishing fire, tenacity, and skill, organizing strikes, writing pamphlets, teaching the poor. His activities led the local governor to place a price on his head. He lost his job, earned a name in Hunan, and went underground.

Mao then moved to Shanghai to work with the local branch of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  The CCP had been founded in 1921 and he was founder member of the party. He was assigned the task of liasing between the Koumintang (KMT) and the CCP but the strain of serving two masters seems to have been a bit too much even for him. He did not get along well with the members of the CCP politburo, of which he was now a member, fell ill and returned to his native village Shaoshan “for a rest” in 1924. In January 1925 he was voted out of the CCP politburo.

The illness that brought Mao back to his native village seems to have shown him the first light. It was then that the intensity of the pent up feelings of the peasantry dawned upon him. During the next two to three years his major activity seems to have been the study of peasant movement in Hunan. It was this study that led him to the unorthodox conclusion, and retrospectively correct, conclusion that the peasantry rather than the proletariat should spearhead the revolution. The peasantry had, for quite a few years, been showing signs of increased militancy against local bullies and authorities. At that time his activity was independent of communist promptings but Mao noticed it, assessed its significance, and got down to helping the peasants organize themselves. In this he seems to have sought help even from KMT, a sensible attitude at the time. However, in 1927 the KMT broke with CCP, arrested and executed many of its members, and the remnants of CCP went underground. This marks the beginning of the 22 year-long military phase of the struggle between the KMT and the CCP to direct the destiny of China. During the next few years the communists organized their armies in scattered parts of China and engaged in limited war Chiang Kai Shek’s numerically superior and better equipped troops. The communists had an important base in Changkingshan – a sort of mountain kingdom  where Mao was the man  in charge, later joined by Chu The and his soldiers. Mao developed differences with the partyb leadership on policies towards the peasants and the general strategy of war. He wanted land confiscated without compensation and its redistribution on a fair basis to peasants who would be armed and organized to defend the land. For this his party leadership admonished him! He did not have much faith in scattered uprisings over broad areas of terrain. He wanted guerilla tactics to be adopted hich the party did not approve of. Ultimately, on account of such differences, he was stripped of his military powers and the party pursued the policy of positional warfare with the KMT. Although the communists survived in their bases they suffered heavy losses on account of this policy. Finally the KMT effected an economic blockade of the communist forces in this region; the communists had to quit the region. They broke the blockade with the objective of migrating to Yenan and this migration is the famed Long March. The Long March lasted a year during which communists displayed astonishing heroism and spirit of sacrifice. In the course of the march Mao was able to capture the chairmanship of the party on account of the mood of disillusion arising from the wrong policies of the leadership, his own realistic and down to earth military strategy and also because he was able to offer hope to a community whose survival hung in balance. The Long March fortified the will of the communists, attracted worldwide attention and brought them fame, respect, and a well deserved legend. Having reached Yenan Mao was able to have a secure base from where he planned, directed and pursued his revolutionary strategy for the next eleven years. It was a period in which the masses, under Mao’s leadership, enjoyed freedom, dignity, and happiness. It gave the communists a great deal of practice in administration. During this period Mao opened up to foreign visitors, Edgar Snow being the first and most notable among these.

When Japan attacked  China Mao responded to the Japanese invasion by joining forces with Chiang Kai Shek to fight the Japanese. This also gave the communists the opportunity to expand their forces, goodwill and influence. Although the war with Japan ended along with World War II in 1945, Chiang Kai Shek and the communists were unable to arrive at an agreement. From then on it was more war for the Chinese people until the communist triumph in 1948. On the road to power Mao  lost a wife, four children, a sister and two brothers. Another wife had broken down under the stress of the Long March and in Yenan he married Chiang Ching who was to cause much trouble in his later years and whom Mao refused to see during his last days.

At th is point it will only be fair to say that, generally speaking, Dick Wilson’s treatment of the pre-1949 period will be more interesting for the general reader compared to other worls on account of the flow and incisive insight characterizing it it. For instance, it is rather tedious to go through the ponderous though scholarly work of Jerome Chen while Stuart Schram’s well known work seems to lack the felicity of Wilson’s work. Also, perhaps, Schram’s account of Mao’s early life lacks the vividness of description characterizing Dick Wilson’s work. Han Suyin’s treatment in “The Morning Deluge” however is quite absorbing but then she has devioted more than a volume to this period.

The close contact Mao enjoyed with the peasants in the Yenan period, the rustic simplicity of life, the opportunities of heroism, and the spirit of sacrifice and camaraderie characterizing the communist rule of that period were in Mao’s mind when he assumed power in Peking. These memories, Mao’s strong sense of identification with the masses, and his scathing contempt for the corrupting influences of city life, contained the seeds of further intra-party conflict that were to come out in the Hundred Flowers Campaign, during the Great Leap Forward and again during the Cultural Revolution. As the communist party set down to task Mao discovered the tendency towards bureaucratization. He complained of the lack of democracy among party  workers – “attention is paid only to arranging and assigning work, no attention is given to going down among the rank and file to learn the real situation and check up on the work.” He wanted the collectivization of agriculture relying on mutual aid teams and cooperation. Liu Shao Chi differed. A significant section of the party generally seemed in favor of Liu Shao Chi’s cautious approach in economic matters. This rift on tactics of socialist transformation stemmed from different perceptions and ran throughout Mao’s lifetime and continues to date. Against this background Mao initiated the Hundred Flowers Campaign in 1957 in which intellectuals and others were allowed to speak on issues. One major purpose behind the campaign was to lift the lid, to get criticised so as to know the truth. “He who does not allow himself to be criticized during his life will be criticised after his death.” In this campaign Mao wanted to batter bureaucratic attitudes and this seems to have hurt many party members. Liu Shao Chi however wanted subjectivism to be attacked first and bureaucratization second during the campaign but Mao put the attack on bureaucratization first.

The same year the Chinese seemed to develop differences with Khruschev – Mao’s sense of pride and Moscow’s own big brotherly attitude had to do with it. In the meantime Mao had been developing the concept of the entire nation at arms to face any invader. Again there were critics notably Peng The Huai, later purged, who wanted a fully professional army. Again the rift between an attitude of reliance on masses and the bureaucratic line of thought! Peng’s “unwise dealings” with Moscow were noted and Khruschev openly attacked Peng’s purge.

The year 1958 saw a very daring experiment, the Great Leap Forward. It was an attempt to industrialise China without urbanizing it. It was thought that one could boost industrial production by spreading technology to the countryside, for instance in the form of backyard furnaces. Similarly it was thought that industrial output could be enhanced simply by working harder. The Great Leap Forward did not produce the desired results and the situation was aggravated by drought and floods. The confusion, man-made and natural, accompanying the Great Leap led to a fall in Mao’s prestige from which “he never fully recovered”.

He then withdrew for a few years and worked on ideas of Socialist Education. He was obviously concerned with imparting ideals of his generation’s struggle to the younger generation. At the same time he was watching the encroachments of “pragmatic” people on the media and in the centres of power who, in the name of pragmatism, were willing to stifle the masses. He was worried about “revisionism” which was for him “the death of the revolution”. He spent a lot of time away from Peking, in Shanghai. His answer to all this was the Cultural Revolution. He remarked in a private conversation with Andre Malraux some time before launching the Cultural Revolution, “I am alone with the masses waiting”. He further said, “The revolution is also a feeling – men do not like the burden of revolution throughout their lives.” It were these feelings of paralysis, of getting into an indifferent rut, that Mao wanted to destroy and the way was use the younger generation, protected by the armed forces, to destroy these centres of power, notably Liu Shao Chi, who propagated and protected the “revisionist” attitudes. The younger generation and the intellectuals, party cadres and government workers were made to go down to the farms to have contact with the masses, to learn from them. Thus he hoped to preserve and transmit the spirit of the revolution.

In the meantime China’s differences with the U.S.S.R. had assumed ominous dimensions. Mao, in hs last daring move, answered by opening up with the U.S.A. He had grown very old by now and factions in the party seemed not patching up their differences.  His wife was also responsible for this and, in his last days, he refused to see her in spite of her requests. He nominated Hia Kuo Feng as his successor because “He has experience in work at the prefectural and provincial levels and his performance has not been bad. Secondly he is loyal and honest. Thirdly he is not stupid.”

The book ends with a brief and generally sound assessment of Mao’s career. Mao was essentially a man of action interested in the results of social change. Propelled by a passionate concern for dignity and equality of men caught in an outmoded structure, Mao remains the only Afro-Asian leader to have faced the West successfully, and without any complexes. “He owed nothing to Russians and carved out an entirely new and daring style of leadership. He taught that all men are equal even if they are uneducated, a totally new concept in China.” He “presided over the creation of an entirely new state in China in which 900 million people enjoy a very much better life than previous generations going back for several centuries.” He and his party were the first to have taken the young, the women, and of course the peasants, seriously. His voice was “so often the voice of sanity and reasonableness.” The author notes that future historians might regard Mao as being “too kind hearted in insisting on the element of human dignity at a time when when not many others were complaining about it.” His concern with human dignity and his faith in the masses led him to daring experiments which were usually resisted by major sections of the party, an important reason for their lack of success. But then “ in each case there was some residue of the experiment which survived in China and made Communism, its national  life, distinctive.” “His failures can only be called failures against his impossibly high criteria. ” But then who could deny that it was an “inspiring career”? “Who could begrudge Mao his fame and his legend?

One could differ with the author in his view that most of the struggles waged by Mao against several party leaders like Peng The Huai and Liu Shao Chi were “unnecessary”, that his accusations against Liu were “far fetched”. To view such conflicts in a society undergoing revolutionary transformations merely or mostly in personal terms as done by many, but not all involved in many cases pertained to the very essence of purpose of the revolution for which so many lives had been laid down. Mao displayed superior historic insight in his unwavering insistence that the masses were the ultimate source of power and wisdom. He knew full well that in a society waking up from centuries of oppression, and fear, the most precious=, and te most precarious, gain is the sense of confidence and courage, dignity and equality, excitement and involvement, which the common man begins to experience. This feeling is the major justification of such a revolution and the source its strength and success. Bureaucratisation tends to destroy this state of involvement – it is hostile to the creativity confidence and creativity of masses. While the fervour of the masses and their enthusiastic involvement remains the most important tool in nation building such a state lasts only as long as the masses feel truly involved; with bureaucratization this is no longer true. Peng’s insistence on a professional army as aginst Mao’s conviction that the masses are to ultimately direct China’s destiny were real issues. Mao’s attack on bureaucratic structure meant a somewhat slower pace of industrialisation  but aimed at protecting, preserving and nourishing the human element. Elements of personal rivalry might have been there but the issues were real and so were the differences. We who suffer and groan under a blind faceless bureaucray can easily comprehend the scathing hatred Mao had for such an institution. An average Westerner does not suffer much at the hands of a bureaucracy; he isused to a different style of politics, and therefore, understandably, is suspicious of the kinds of conflicts that occurred in China.

Another point which the author does not fully take note of, like many other writers, is that Mao was ultimately interested in creating a certain kind of man – frugal and fearless, poetic and martial, sane and simple, selfless and riven by thirst for knowledge and concern for the dignity and equality of men. This was what he was like, and save perhaps Edgar Snow, who astutely understood what Mao wanted, hardly any author gives sufficient importance to this aspect of Mao’s thinking. Although this kind of idealism is what will make Mao a source of inspiration for others, major sections of his party today seem not to care for this sort of thing – or so it appears.