Mao Zedong Thought Research Equality

Mao Zedong’s idea of equality is an important part of Mao Zedong thought. Mao Zedong dedicated his whole life to China to establish a free and equal society. And for this, he paid through hard work and left us abundant ideological heritage. Summing up and researching the precious heritage can not only help us understand and grasp the idea of equality of Mao Zedong thought, but also help us get a complete and accurate understanding of Mao Zedong thought. Most importantly, it can provide us a more solid theoretical and historical perspective to grasp the essential requirements of the equal values of scientific socialism and a methodological guidance for studying into the equality-related problems of Chinese society and finding the corresponding solutions.This dissertation, based on the historical materialism and dialectical materialism, guided by the Marxist’s idea of equality as the theoretical basis, and with a macro view of the development of western equality, according to modern China’s profound social changes, in the reality of the full in-depth reading of Mao Zedong equality shown on the related materials, uses a multi-disciplined theory and method including philosophy, history, political science, sociology, economics, and so on to systematically discuss the idea of equality of Mao Zedong, from its origin, development context, the basic connotation and main characteristics. It also expounds the overall historical evolution of the equality thought of Mao Zedong through different historical periods and its profound time-changing characteristics, and then deeply reveals the contemporary value of Mao Zedong equality thoughts.Besides Introduction and Conclusion, the dissertation is composed of five chapters.Chapter One is concerned with the theoretical origins of Mao Zedong’s idea of equality. Mao Zedong’s idea of equality abandons and exceeds the ideas of equality advocated by China ancient thinkers, refers to those of the Western thinkers, especially inherits and develops Marxist’s. The ideas of equality since ancient times and modern times of China embody not only the ideals of equality appealed to by the people of insight as well as the upper ruling class, the slogans striving for equality put forward by the peasant class in peasant uprisings to get rid of oppression and exploitation, but also the ideas of ethnic equality and social equality proposed by Kang Youwei, Sun Zhongshan and Chen Duxiu on behalf of advanced intellectuals in modern times of China who began to seek the truth saving China from the West after reflecting the traditional Chinese culture during intensified ethnic and social crisis. Absorbing the beneficial elements from A Perfect World and the idea of equality between the rich and the poor and removing their ideology of feudalism, Mao Zedong’s idea of equality proposes to abolish feudal hierarchy and gives a new meaning to national independence and A Perfect World, making an effort to build a new China with people being equal. Mr. Mao was also influenced and attracted by the ideas of equality considered as the critical point in the Western political ideology, in which Anarchy Communism, Utopian socialist ideas, Rousseau and Montesquieu’s idea of equality and American democratic ideas had an important influence on him. Marxist’s idea of equality discloses the objective law to realize human’s equality for the first time, finds a right way to achieve social equality and surpasses the thinkers before. Marxist’s position, viewpoints and methodology lay a solid foundation for Mao’s idea of equality and the ideas of equality advocated by Marx, Engels and Lenin are its direct theoretical origin. The idea roots in the excellent traditional culture of China, inherits and develops the similar ideas of many significant thinkers at home and abroad. All these ideas and cultures combine to contribute to Mao’s idea of equality.Chapter Two deeply analyzes Mao Zedong’s idea of equality from his childhood to the period before the foundation of the Communist Party of China. This period is the important part in which Mao Zedong started his equality consciousness and gradually formed the idea of equality. To resort to the sage’s historical view is the outstanding characteristic of Mao Zedong’s social consciousness from his childhood to youth. Under the leading orientation of sage’s historical view, Mao Zedong’s simple equality consciousness began its rudiments. Later under the influence of concept of equality of western ideologists, Mao Zedong transferred former appeal to sage’s historical view to questioning sages and the highlight of individual value and advocating personality and criticizing servility. Opposing all kinds of power politics and advocating the equality between nations and countries are the component parts of young Mao Zedong’s idea of equality. He advocated national self-determination and A Perfect World and also comprehensively revealed and criticized and analyzed all kinds of power politics in China at that time. During this period, Mao Zedong gradually formed his simple equality value orientation, and started his advocate of independent and free equality personality and strong outcry against inequality among the nations as well as sweet fantasy about the reality of a perfect society. In the early days, Mao Zedong was inclined to realize a traditional "perfect" society of China and carried on "New Village " experiment in Hunan Province. But due to the fantasy which was divorced from reality, Mao Zedong abandoned it and transferred to revolution.Chapter Three mainly elaborats Mao Zedong’s idea of equality during the period of new-democratic revolution and provs the gradually mature process of the thoughts in social revolution practice during this period. It is in the period of new-democratic revolution that Mao’s idea of equality gradually gets mature. During this period, Mao gained relatively mature achievement on almost all the thoughts and practice about equality, such as economic equality, political equality, cultural equality, and sex equality. Among Mao’s idea of equality, economic equality and equitable distribution take a prominent position. In Mao’s opinion, the material foundation of social and economic equality in China is the realization of three major economic programs, that is, confiscation of feudal classes’landed estate to the peasants, confiscation of bureaucratic monopoly capital to new democratic country and protection of national industry and commerce. By doing so, Mao Zedong seized the core of equality problems in China, broke the bondage of traditional thinking that understood equality as average and even attributed equality to absolute equalitarianism, and insisted such values and a course of action as "giving consideration to both public and private interests","giving consideration to both army and people","making people gain as well as lose" and "making all the major classes fell reasonable and rational". Political equality closely relates to economic equality. During the period of new-democratic revolution, Mao Zedong put the building of joint dictatorship of all revolutionary classes as the prerequisite of political equality, took people’s fundamental rights and freedom as core content and struggled for various rights of people, such as the rights of survival, work, vote, education, assembly, association, speech and publishing. He proved the validity and rationality for the masses to equally enjoy various fundamental rights, pointed out the fundamental rights which should be enjoyed by the masses, explained that these rights had the features of " affinity to the people",universality and practicality, and explored the forms and organizing principles with distinct Chinese characteristics to realize the masses’ various fundamental rights. Mao Zedong also emphasized the equality problems in cultural field, actively promoted national, scientific and popular new democratic cultural construction. He claimed that different ethnic groups, different social classes, different political groups and different academic schools should realize cultural equality from both the thought and the system. Mao also committed to women’s liberation and took it as a natural measure of common liberation and realizing equality. During the new democratic period, the value target of Mao’s idea of equality was to fight for equality rights for the great majority of people. It accordance with both Marxist view and the development trend that the privileges of a minority of people should be deprived to make most people enjoy rights.Chapter Four focuses on the process of development and tortuous evolution in Mao Zedong’s idea of equality after the foundation of the new China. After the People’s Republic of China had been founded, our Chinese communists with great joy of victory, led by Mao Zedong with boundless enthusiasm, started a new revolution to build a fully-equal society, raised a series of thoughts on social equality and implemented a whole set of institutions and policy changes in social equality. Economically, our communists established a perfect socialist public ownership by transforming the private ownership of means of production to achieve the equal rights of relation between the possession and the use of the means of production; strengthened economic co-ordination in all areas by a planned economy to avoid polarization and ensure social fair. Politically, our communists established the people’s congress system to realize people’s rights to create and supervise the government’s behavior, and to ensure the realization of people’s sovereignty; established the Chinese Communist Party-led multi-party cooperation and political consultation system to achieve the rights of political participation of democratic parties and democratic personages; established the regional ethnic autonomy system to achieve genuine national equality; eliminated staff privileges by combating bureaucracy to achieve the real equality of the relationship between cadres and the masses. Culturally, our communists abolished the educational privilege to ensure the masses’ equal right to enjoy education; established the basic principle of science and culture,"let a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend " to develop the scientific and cultural projects and build an equal cultural environment for development. In social life, our communists established such systems of safe guards as people’s equal engaging in productive labor, accepting cultural education, and enjoying the material life to eliminate three major differences and achieve equality of personality. In the field of international relation, our communists carried out the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence to achieve the equal relationship among countries. Through the overview, we can include that Mao Zedong’s idea of equalitys and equality practice are the intersection of insights and contradictions, right and wrong. The victory of new-democratic revolution and the foundation of the socialist system laid the necessary institutional basis for the realization of Mao Zedong’s great thought-establishment of equal society. On the base of this system, our communists began to apply the idea of equality to economic, political, cultural and social fields and then fully put it into practice and continually enriched this thought. It was during this period that Mao Zedong’s equality ideals and equality requirements were widely implemented in social management, with great successes, and also with huge mistakes and failures. However, as a real value pursuit implemented in China for the first time, equality provided a very important material and spiritual heritage for future generations to rebuild an equal society on the basis of Mao Zedong’s construction of equal society.Chapter Five makes an in-depth historical evaluation on Mao Zedong’s idea of equality dialectically and objectively. Mao Zedong’s idea of equality is a very important part of Mao Zedong Thought. Mao inherited and absorbed the rational factors of the idea of equality from Chinese and foreign thinkers, including Marxist thinkers, and gradually formed his own idea of equality with distinctive characteristics, which has a strong militant, active practical, distinctive national character and the romantic nature of poetry. Combining the equality theory of Marxism with China’s national conditions and reality, Mao creatively developed Marxist theory of equality, formed Mao Zedong’s idea of equality with Chinese characteristics and made a significant contribution to Marxism’s localization in China. He has devoted his whole life to exploring and finding the true meaning of social equality. To make fundamental changes in the social system as a primary prerequisite for the achievement of equality, in accordance with the will of the people’s constitutional legislation as a reliable basis for the achievement of equality, seeking to maximize the interests of the people as to achieve equality the core requirements, the right policy arrangements as an important guarantee for the achievement of equality, finally he found a successful solution to China’s equality problem. Mao Zedong’s idea of equality made a significant contribution to the development of human thoughts, leaving a lot of valuable spiritual wealth. A series of important ideas and views have had and will have extensive and far-reaching impact on Chinese society and China’s development process. Due to the impact of the era and personal qualities, there are many limitations in Mao Zedong’s idea of equality. His lack of in-depth political, economic and social analysis of equality in theory made his idea enthusiastic rather than rational. His over-emphasis on equality of personality made him neglect to explore the content and approaches of equality from human rights and legislation and have a lot of fantasy color when making equal social practice. But Mao Zedong’s idea of equality still made a significant contribution to the development of human thoughts, leaving a lot of valuable spiritual wealth, which have had and will have extensive and far-reaching impact on Chinese society and China’s development process. It provides us a path of thinking to further understanding of the principle of socialist equality, to build a harmonious society, and in particular, to solve equality issues in contemporary Chinese society, and also provides an important methodological principle for the study of contemporary social equality theory.