"On New Democracy"

"On New Democracy" has been widely regarded as a manifesto of the moderate intentions of the Chinese Communists. In terms of intra-Party politics at the time, the contrary was true. The essay was unacceptable to the Party leadership as a whole because of its radicalism. It had appeared not as a Party document but rather as the personal

Map 10
The Central China Bases, circa 1944

opinion of Mao in a journal.^[1] In spite of its theoretical pretensions, it was an intensely political statement, written in the context of a very complicated struggle involving two sets of triangular relationships. One was the CCP–Kuomintang–Japan triangle; the other was the CCP–Kuomintang–Soviet Union triangle. Without an awareness of political stress generated by these triangles, Mao's intentions in writing "On New Democracy" would be lost to our sight.

Since Mao's vision of the revolution and corresponding strategies as delineated in the Wayaopao Resolution had been set aside, little that he said or wrote about the revolution's goals seemed to be fully his own. At the Sixth Plenum, for instance, he conceded the Kuomintang's initiative in the war and promised to cooperate with it after the war. In mid–1939, however, he returned to the task of defending the rural revolutionary line by raising the most basic issues. His challenge to the urban revolutionary line became more and more strident until it culminated in the concept of New Democracy.^[2]

In "On New Democracy," Mao discussed extensively the various stages of the revolution in China. He began with the familiar two-stage theory of revolution—democratic and socialist. His innovation was to further subdivide the bourgeois–democratic stage into two. According to him, the Opium War of 1840 had ushered in the stage of bourgeois–democracy in China.^[3] China began to be transformed from a "feudal" country to a "semi-feudal," "semi-colonial" country. The Taiping Rebellion, the Sino–French War, the first Sino–Japanese War, and the Reformist movement of 1898 continued the trend until the bourgeois–democratic stage found its full expression in the Revolution of 1911.^[4] But the task of the revolution, i.e., to change a "semi-colonial," "semi-feudal" society into an independent democratic society, was not completed.

A change, however, occurred in China's bourgeois–democratic revolution after the outbreak of the first imperialist world war in 1914 and the founding of a socialist state . . . as a result of the Russian October Revolution. . . .

Since these events, the Chinese bourgeois–democratic revolution has changed, it has come within the new category of the bourgeois–democratic revolutions , and, as far as the alignment of revolutionary forces is concerned, forms part of the proletarian–socialist world revolution .^[5]

[1] It appeared in Chinese Culture . See Selected Works , II, 339, 382. It was met with disapproval. See The Case of Peng Teh-huai , p. 212.

[2] His essays, "The May 4th Movement," "Introducing the Communist ," and "The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party"—all written in 1939—were direct precursors.

[3] Selected Works , II, 342.

[4] Ibid. , p. 343.

[5] Ibid. , Emphasis added.

Ex post facto, Mao designated the Chinese revolution since the May Fourth Movement and the founding of the Chinese Communist movement as post-bourgeois–democratic, though still pre-socialist.

In fact, New Democracy was Mao's declaration of war against the Kuomintang and the Republic of China. Sooner or later there had to be a war to decide the question, "Whither China?" Mao was therefore explicit about the state system to be erected under New Democracy. After 1917,

It is no longer a revolution of the old type led by the bourgeoisie with the aim of establishing a capitalist society and a state under bourgeois dictatorship. It belongs to the new type of revolution led by the proletariat with the aim, in the first stage, of establishing a new–democratic society and a state under the joint dictatorship of all the revolutionary classes .^[6]

The "dual" character of the Chinese bourgeoisie would induce the progressive elements to join the New Democracy.^[7] The "joint dictatorship" thus resembled the concept of "united front from below and above."

Having sufficiently radicalized the Chinese revolution, Mao nevertheless withheld himself. He insisted that the New Democracy "will need quite a long time and cannot be accomplished overnight. We are not utopians . . . . "^[8] While unmistakably subordinating the Chinese revolution to Soviet leadership in connection with the war against Japan, he hedged against identifying it with socialism proper. This was because of his conviction, I infer, that the New Democracy was "democracy of the Chinese type, a new and special type."^[9] Obviously having Wang Ming in mind, he said, "the universal truth of Marxism must be combined with specific national characteristics and acquire a definite national form . . . . "^[10] This nationalistic injunction stemmed from the basic proposition that

the Chinese revolution is essentially a peasant revolution and that the resistance to Japan now going on is essentially peasant resistance. Essentially, the politics of New Democracy means giving the peasants their rights. . . . mass culture means raising the cultural level of the peasants.^[11]

New Democracy was radical yet uniquely indigenous because it was a peasant democracy. In this sense, the concept was a restatement of the theories of "Asiatic society" and of the "hinterland." These two theories had been advanced by Besso Lominadze, Heinz Neumann, and Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai in the debate at the Sixth Comintern Congress, which

[6] Ibid. , p. 344.

[7] Ibid. , pp. 348–349.

[8] Ibid. , p. 358.

[9] Ibid. , p. 342.

[10] Ibid. , p. 381.

[11] Ibid. , p. 366.

directed the CCP's Sixth Congress in Moscow. "This faction," according to Richard Thornton, "favored a vigorous policy of immediate action to overthrow the Nationalists" following the 1927 coup.^[12] They devised a theory closely resembling the theory of continuous or permanent revolution which would bypass the bourgeois–democratic stage. By stressing that China was characterized by Asiatic mode of production rather than by feudalism, they maintained that the bourgeoisie was only weakly developed in China. Hence, the Chinese revolution "could not inaugurate a capitalist stage, and . . . a policy of immediate armed uprisings would succeed in pushing the revolution directly into its socialist phase."^[13] Without strong bourgeoisie, they also argued, the anti-imperialist struggle of the workers and peasants would take on an international and proletarian character. Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai brought up the theory of the "hinterland" or of the "world rural districts."^[14] According to this theory, not only the bourgeoisie but the proletariat as well were weak in China. By this means, he argued for an immediate transition to radical agrarian revolution and the formation of peasant soviets. Stalin, who was aligned with Bukharian at the time, expressly rejected these radical proposals.^[15]

Behind this theoretical orientation of Mao loomed his own political predicament. His revolution was a struggle against the Kuomintang's bourgeois–democracy with Soviet assistance; yet it also pointed ultimately to the independence of the Chinese Communist movement from Soviet hegemony. To the apparent horror of his critics, he averred, "We are now living in a time when the 'principle of going up into the hills' applies . . . . "^[16] He was saying in effect that, with or without the Kuomintang, he would lead a guerrilla war among the peasants. He could not reveal his animus toward Stalin with such candor; he had to resort to a parable. On the sixtieth birthday of Stalin (December, 1939), Mao wrote a message:

Living in a period of the bitterest sufferings in our history, we Chinese people most urgently need help from others. . . .

But who are our friends?

There are so-called friends, self-styled friends of the Chinese people, whom even some Chinese unthinkingly accept as friends. But such friends can only be classed with Li Lin-fu the prime minister in the Tang Dynasty who was notorious as a man with "honey on his lips and murder in his heart."^[17]

A post-war edition of Selected Works , published under Mao's personal supervision, added a footnote explaining Li Lin-fu's character:

[12] Thornton, Comintern , p. 4.

[13] Ibid. , p. 16.

[14] Ibid. , p. 20.

[15] Ibid. , p. 23.

[16] Selected Works , II, 366.

[17] Ibid. , p. 335.

Although feigning friendship, he plotted ruin of all those who surpassed him . . . or found favour in the emperor's eyes.^[18]

One must conclude that New Democracy pointed for the CCP a third path between Republican China and Soviet Russia.