Chinese Revolution In Two Steps

But Mao Tsetung was no peasant revolutionary as some malevolent people have claimed. In his vision the Chinese revolution necessarily embraced two stages, the bourgeois democratic and the socialist revolutions, which were two essentially different revolutionary processes. "The democratic revolution is the necessary preparation for the socialist revolution, and the socialist revolution is the inevitable sequel to the democratic revolution. The ultimate aim for which all Communists strive is to bring about a socialist and communist society." (The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party).

It was his solution of the problem of ensuring the uninterrupted transition from the bourgeois democratic to the socialist revolution which was Mao's first significant contribution to Marxism-Leninism.

Other Communists, both Chinese and foreign, had tried to graft the experience of the October Revolution in the Soviet Union onto China. Repeated attempts were made between 1927 and 1934 at seizing large cities but all were drowned in blood. The Canton Commune in December 1927 lasted but three days.

Mao Tsetung recognised that uneven economic and political development existed throughout China and that the counter-revolution was relatively strong in the cities and relatively weak in the rural areas. He concluded that it was impossible to seize the principal cities in an insurrection and then spread the revolution to the rural areas as had happened in the Soviet Union.

Instead Mao Tsetung advanced the following path: under the leadership of the Communist Party, arouse the peasant masses to wage people's war, unfold the agrarian revolution, build stable rural base areas, use the countryside to surround the cities and finally capture them and liberate the whole country.

The people's war would pass through a number of phases as the revolutionary armed forces accumulated strength. Initially, guerilla warfare would be waged. Its purpose would not be to hold territory so much as to tire out the enemy and to annihilate him gradually. Later, regular army units would appear which would fight mobile warfare rather than battles of fixed position. When the time was right, the regular army, backed by regional and local units, would go over to the offensive and finish off the Kuomintang regime.

During the protracted struggle in the rural areas, the Communist Party continued to work amongst the workers and urban petty bourgeoisie, leading them in judicious struggles to improve their conditions and to prepare for the entry of the people's army into the cities. This work was essential to prevent the isolation of the rural base areas.

With his theory of new democratic revolution, formulated during the anti-Japanese war, Mao Tsetung broadened the concept of bourgeois democratic revolution.