Mao Zedong was born on 26 December 1893 in a middle peasant family in Shaoshan Valley, modern day Xiangtan County of Hunan Province, under the reign of Qing Dynasty Emperor Guangxu. From the age of six, Mao worked on his father's land and at a later age served as the family account keeper, performing farm work alongside the laborers hired by his father. Mao Zedong learned from his own experiences the hardships that the Peasantry suffered, as Mao Yinchang enforced a harsh work discipline on Mao Zedong and his younger brothers, even beating them. Such a life ingrained in Mao a rebellious spirit and good work discipline.
At the age of 17, filled with the need to continue his studies outside his secluded village and hearing that Dongshan School taught modern knowledge, Mao convinced family members to persuade his father to approve of the move. Leaving the environs of Shaoshan Valley for the first time.
On the eve of the 1911 Revolution, Changsha was a hub of the Province's revolutionary activity, with even the local military forces aligning with the revolutionaries. Changsha was Mao's, then 18, first encounter with revolutionary thought, becoming a dedicated reader of the revolutionary publication Minli bao (People’s Journal).
Mao immediately joined the revolutionary army of the new government, but rather than a student detachment, he opted to join the regular army. Becoming a private in the left platoon of the First Battalion, 25th Brigade, of the Hunan New Army. It was while reading an article in the Xianghan xinwen (Xianghan News), that Mao would first encounter the term 'socialism'.
After the revolution, during the New Culture Movement the New Youth magazine would criticize the then KMT goverment for its failures in abolishing the feudal istem throuth a materialist lents, a collegue friend introduced Mao to it. Eventually its makers would found the Communist party of China in Shanghai by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao in June 1921, And Mao was one of its early members
Following instructions from the Comintern members also joined the Kuomintang.
Mao worked as a Kuomintang political organizer in Shanghai. With the help of advisers from the Soviet Union the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) gradually increased its power in China. Its leader, Sun Yat-sen died on 12th March 1925. When Chiang Kai-Shek emerged as the new leader of the Kuomintang after a power struggle between the right and left wing of the party, he carried out a purge (April 12 Purge) that seek to eliminate the communists from the organization and the country. The survivors of the purge managed to established diferent soviets inside the country the biggest being the Jiangxi Soviet.
The nationalists now imposed a blockade and Mao Zedong decided to evacuate the area and establish a new stronghold in the north-west of China. In October 1934 Mao, Lin Biao, Zhu De, and some 100,000 men and their dependents headed west through mountainous areas, this Began the Long March in which Mao would win the Political Power Struggle inside the CPC and become the Chairman of the CPC
The marchers covered about fifty miles a day and reached Shensi on 20th October 1935. It is estimated that only around 30,000 survived the 8,000-mile Long March.
During the Second World War Mao's well-organized guerrilla forces were well led by Zhu De and Lin Biao. As soon as the Japanese surrendered, Communist forces began a war against the Nationalists led by Chaing Kai-Shek. The communists gradually gained control of the country and on 1st October, 1949, Mao announced the establishment of People's Republic of China.
In 1958 Mao announced the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to increase agricultural and industrial production. This reform programme included the establishment of large agricultural communes containing as many as 75,000 people. The communes ran their own collective farms and factories. Each family received a share of the profits and also had a small private plot of land. However, three years of floods and bad harvests severely damaged levels of production. The scheme was also hurt by the decision of the Soviet Union to withdraw its large number of technical experts working in the country. In 1962 Mao's reform programme came to an end and the country resorted to a more traditional form of economic production.
As a result of the failure on the Great Leap Forward, Mao retired from the post of chairman of the People's Republic of China. His place as head of state was taken by Liu Shaoqi. Mao remained important in determining overall policy. In the early 1960s Mao became highly critical of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. He was for example appalled by the way Nikita Khrushchev backed down over the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Mao became openly involved in politics in 1966 with the start of the Cultural Revolution.
During the early 1960s, Mao became concerned with the nature of post-1959 China. He saw that the old ruling elite was replaced by a new one. He was concerned that those in power were becoming estranged from the people they were to serve. In an attempt to dislodge those in power who favoured the Soviet model of communism, Mao told students and young workers as his Red Guards to fight the revisionists in the party.
Lin Biao compiled some of Mao's writings into the handbook, The Quotations of Chairman Mao, and arranged for a copy of what became known as the Little Red Book, to every Chinese citizen.
Zhou Enlai at first gave his support to the campaign but became concerned when fighting broke out between the Red Guards and their opposition. The Cultural Revolution came to an end when Liu Shaoqi resigned from all his posts on 13th October 1968. In 1969, Mao declared the Cultural Revolution to be over.
Mao gave his support to the Gang of Four: Jiang Qing (Mao's fourth wife), Wang Hongwen, Yao Wenyuan and Zhange Chungqiao.
Around the time of the death of Lin Biao in 1971, the Cultural Revolution began to lose momentum. The new commanders of the People's Liberation Army demanded that order be restored in light of the dangerous situation along the border with the Soviet Union.
Near the end of Mao's life, a power struggle occurred between the Gang of Four and the alliance of Deng Xiaoping, Zhou Enlai, and Ye Jianying.
Mao Zedong died in Beijing on 9th September, 1976.
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Currently reading Arghiri Emmanuel's Unequal Exchange, and earlier today I came across a part which GroKKK@hexbear.net would find interesting.
Full text
Out of Britain’s five former colonies of settlement—the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Cape—the first four have become the richest countries in the world, with a national per capita income of $3,000 or $4,000 annually. The fifth, South Africa, has remained a semi-developed country, with a national income of about $500 per capita, about as poor as Greece or Argentina. Yet the natural resources of South Africa are not less considerable than those of North America and are certainly more so than those of Australia and New Zealand. All five were colonized by men of the same northern stock, tough and fearless. The climate of South Africa is no less healthy than those of the other four. Finally, all five were connected with the same source of capital, London, and belonged to the same commonwealth of nations and the same mercantile and financial networks. One factor alone was different, namely, what happened to the indigenous population. Whereas in the other four colonies the total extermination of the natives was undertaken, in South Africa the colonists confined themselves to relegating them to the ghettos of apartheid. The result is that in the first four countries wages have reached very high levels, while in South Africa, despite the selective wages enjoyed by the white workers, the average wage level has remained relatively very low, hardly any higher than that in the underdeveloped countries, and below that of the Balkans, Portugal, and Spain.Let us suppose that tomorrow the South African whites were to exterminate the Bantus instead of employing them at low wages, and replace them with white settlers receiving high wages. There would certainly occur, insofar as this operation was carried out more or less brusquely, upheavals, bankruptcies, frictions of conversion and adjustment, a transition period of great difficulty; but the ultimate result would be a leap forward by South Africa, which would soon catch up with the more developed countries. This is a frightful thought, I know, but it fits the reality of the capitalist system. To take the case of gold alone, despite the regulated market for this metal, the improvement in the terms of exchange would bring South Africa a considerable extra income. With white miners the cost of production in the great majority of the mines would greatly exceed the present selling price of 35 dollars an ounce. If the Federal Reserve Bank were stubbornly to refuse to raise this price, most of the South African mines would shut down. Only a very few especially rich ones would go on working.^[The average wage of the black workers in the gold mines in 1937 was 2s. 3d., plus 11d. to cover cost of food and quarters. The average wage of the remaining workers was 25s. The annual wage bill for 36,000 whites was £14,307,000, that of the 288,000 “others” came to £9,854,000. The “others” included Asians, whose wages were much higher than those of the blacks, though not so high as the whites earned; and South African legislation and statistics classify as Asians people who have come from such countries as Turkey, Cyprus, and Greece. Between 1937 and 1963 the nominal wages of the whites increased threefold; their real wages (allowing for the fall of about 50 percent in the purchasing power of money) increased by 50 percent. During the same period the real wages of the blacks did not change at all. According to figures given by the official Bulletin of Statistics, quoted by John Cope, South Africa (London, 1965), average wages in the mines were in 1962 as follows: whites £1,217 per year, coloreds and Asians £205, Africans £74. Thus the nominal wages of the blacks rose from 2s. a day under President Kruger in 1895 to 2s. 3d. in 1937 and about 5s. in 1962. Allowing for the actual devaluation of the currency between the last two dates, the real wages of the blacks hardly changed over these 25 years, so that Alex Hepple can write in South Africa, a Political and Economic History (London, 1966): “Their cash wages, calculated at constant 1959 prices, actually declined from £72 to £70 ($188 per year) between 1935 and 1960.” The remark quoted by S. H. Frankel, in 1938, is still true: “‘Nothing has changed so little in South Africa,’ an eminent South African authoress has written, ‘as the black man’s rate of pay’” (Capital Investment in Africa [Oxford, 1938], p. 83).] Production, which is at present about 900 tons, or about 75 percent of world production, not including the U.S.S.R., and 60 percent, including sales by the U.S.S.R. (base year, 1962), would fall to a negligible figure, perhaps 50 or 100 tons.
If we consider that since 1965 the gold production of the capitalist world, together with sales by the U.S.S.R., has been insufficient to meet the needs of private hoarders and of industry; that the currency stock held by the United States has had to be drawn upon to make up the deficiency; and that this stock has already fallen to about 12,000 tons, we can easily see that such a decline in South African gold production would threaten to clear out the vaults of Fort Knox in a few years.^[This passage having been written in 1967, the figures quoted no longer correspond to reality. Today the gold held by the United States does not exceed 9,000 tons ($10 billion).]
Faced with such a threat, the United States would have to choose between increasing the price of gold and putting an embargo on it. If it chose the latter course, it would save its own stock but would lose all control over the free market, which would then be thrown completely off balance. The private demand for industry and hoarding is at present around 1,500 tons, and world production, including U.S.S.R. sales, would, in the event of such a defection by South Africa as I have envisaged, amount to only 500 or 600 tons. Furthermore, there is no certainty that the U.S.S.R. would go on selling gold on the free market, if the United States were to proclaim an embargo. Logically, these sales would cease. On the other hand, the mere fact of the embargo would entail intensified speculation on a rise in price and an increase in propensity to hoard. Finally, the embargo would release the issuing authorities in the other countries from all their obligations to cooperate with the Federal Reserve Bank and from their present cautious policy, and a large share of their dollar holdings, which they would no longer be able to convert at the Federal Reserve Bank, would be used to buy gold on the free market. All these factors would increase private demand still further, and eventually it would be compelled to pay the price needed if South Africa was to bring its gold back into production, paying white men’s wages to its white miners.^[It goes without saying that the same results would be achieved if South Africa, instead of exterminating its blacks and replacing them with whites, were to be satisfied with raising their wages to the white level. Such an assumption being fanciful, however, I have assumed instead the straightforward extermination of the black population, as being, in present circumstances the less unrealistic of the two hypotheses. The embargo postulated in this passage has, moreover, actually been imposed since 15 August 1971: but because South Africa retains the low wage level for black workers in the mines, the quantity of gold produced and marketed by that country has not declined, and its price on the free market has so far diverged from the official parity by only 20 percent.]