Abstract
The founders of classical Marxism made reference to the first shoots of revolutionary, developmental nationalism in Asia as early as the middle years of the 1800s. They were less well disposed to acknowledge similar happenings, at approximately the same time, in the economically less-developed regions of Europe. It was different when the founders of Marxism considered the reactive, nationalist responses they observed among East and South Asians. Both Marx and Engels saw the developmental nationalists of India and China as defenders of national integrity. In Europe, the advocates of a similar cause were more frequently deemed thoughtless agitators, uninformed concerning the inevitable course of history, and devoid of class consciousness—stoking the ashes of an extinguished enthusiasm.
The [Bolshevik Revolution is] … a nationalistic struggle. At the time we were not aware that Russia was fighting for nationalism…. Moreover, the communism of her initial stage has … been modified to such an extent that it accords with our Principle of the People’s Livelihood.
—Sun Yat-sen1
The new-democratic revolution … differs from a socialist revolution in that it overthrows the rule of imperialists, traitors and reactionaries in China but does not destroy any section of capitalism which is capable of contributing to the anti-imperialist struggle. The new-democratic revolution is basically in line with the revolution envisaged in the Three People’s Principles as advanced by Dr. Sun Yat-sen in 1924.
—Mao Zedong2
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Notes
Sun Yat-sen, “A Statement on the Formation of National Government,” Fundamentals of National Reconstruction (Taipei: China Cultural Service, 1953), 162.
Mao, “The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party,” Selected Works of Mao Tsetung (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1965. Hereafter SWM), vol. 2, 327–28.
See the discussion of the varied reactions to foreign impostures by the Chinese, in Maria Hsia Chang, Return of the Dragon: China’s Wounded Nationalism (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), chaps. 4–5.
See, for example, Sun Yat-sen, Kidnapped in London (London: J. W. Arrowsmith, 1897), chap. 1.
See Sun’s comments in Sun, “A History of the Chinese Revolution,” in Prescription for Saving China: Selected Writings of Sun Yat-sen, ed. Julie Lee Wei, Ramon H. Myers, and Donald G. Gillin (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1994), 252.
Sun, The International Development of China (Taipei: China Cultural Service, 1953), v.
See the text of the note of January 23, 1923, in Shao Chuan Leng and Norman D. Palmer, Sun Yat-sen and Communism (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1960), 63.
It is clear that at the point of preparing his final lectures on the Sanminchui, Sun used some of the language, and some of the concepts, of the American, Maurice Williams, who, in 1921, published his The Social Interpretation of History: A Refutation of the Marxian Economic Interpretation of History. See the comparisons in Maurice Zolotow, Maurice William and Sun Yat-sen (London: Robert Hale, Ltd., 1948), particularly pages 98–99. What is not true, although occasionally suggested, is that Sun’s views on Marxism can be traced exclusively to the influence of Williams. Sun had settled on his criticism of Marxism earlier than his first exposure to Williams’ work.
Later the Chinese Communist authorities were to postpone the official date of the founding of the party to 1921, in order to allow for the presence and participation of Mao Zedong. Actually Mao was not present at the founding of the party he was to lead. See the account in Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (London: Vintage Books, 2006), 22–24.
One can trace this confusion in Mao’s essays of the period. Mao undertook a variety of field investigations of the “rural problem.” They display a degree of sophistication that is admirable for someone little trained in such inquiry. See the discussion in Roger R. Tompson’s “Introduction” to Mao Zedong, Report from Xunwu (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 3–41.
For a more detailed discussion of the economics of the “Nanking decade,” see Arthur N. Young, China’s Nation Building Effort, 1927–1937: The Financial and Economic Record (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1971);
Paul K. T. Sih ed., The Strenuous Decade: China’s Nation Building Efforts, 1927–1937 (New York: St. Johns University Press, 1970); and
Hou Chi-ming and Yin Nai-ping, “Economic Duality, War Finance, and Economic Development in China, 1927–1945,” Proceedings of Conference on Chiang Kai-shek and Modern China (Taipei: China Cultural Service, 1987), 636–58. Chiang Kai-shek reported the economic developmental achievements of the Nanking government in his China’s Destiny and Chinese Economic Theory (New York: Roy Publishers, 1947), 128–29. Both Chiang Kai-shek documents were originally published in 1943.
For a more ample discussion of the various Marxist heterodoxies of the period prior to the First World War, see A. James Gregor, Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).
These notions represent the standard interpretation of Marx’s “historical materialism” before Lenin’s “creative developments.” See Karl Kautsky, Die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung (Berlin: Verlag J. H. W. Dietz Nachf., 1929), 2 vols.
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© 2014 A. James Gregor
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Gregor, A.J. (2014). China, Developmental Nationalism, and Revolution. In: Marxism and the Making of China. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137379498_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137379498_4
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