Aim: How did “revolution” create a different type decolonization?

Case study: China

Mao’s Communism: Differences with Lenin and Soviets

• Peasants as the revolutionary elements – true or making lemonade from lemons?

• The revolutionary countryside will surround the bourgeois city

• “We must not digest Western ideas raw” • Similarity: “Leninist-type” political party

Is Mao a “Fanon-ist?”

Great Leap Forward 1959-61

• Abandons “slow but steady” approach; discards Soviet model of Five Year Plans

• Collectivizes land into giant communes of 20–30,000 people

• Decentralization of economy – Communes are supposed to be self-sufficient

• Idea that “revolutionary enthusiasm” was all that was needed

• Mao rejects reports that it was not working – mass starvation in countryside

Cultural Revolution 1966-76

• Mao unleashes “the youth” against Party bureaucrats to regain power

• Period of “Learning from the ‘Little Red Book’”• Education and learning denigrated – high schools

and colleges shut down for ten years• Intellectuals sent to the countryside to “learn from

the peasants”• Massive disruption of society – anyone can be a

class enemy

Similarities and Differences with Stalinist Russia

• Internal opposition suppressed, even within Party

• Radical changes implemented

• Overwhelming state force and propaganda utilized

• Stalin seems more of a natural bureaucrat

• Mao more of a natural anarchist

Is Mao a “Fanon-ist?”Is he attempting to create a

new synthesis through “permanent revolution?”