Chronicles of a revolution (2)

Chronicles of a succesful revolution (2): Young Mao (16) shaped by the actuality, study and identification with the exploited.

Out “The Morning Deluge – Mao Tse Tung and the Chines Revolution”, Han Suyin (http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150182915389985): 


“One of the local landlords  came into conflict with some of his peasant tenants over rent payments. The peasants were member of the Kelao, the Elder Brother secret society, the most widespread among the peasantry in Hunan, Szechuan and Hupei. SunYatsen's organisation relied much on this particular Kelao society for armed insurrection and for smuggling of weapons. In various popular movements, such as the railway dispute in Szechuan[1],  the Kelao would play a prominent part, and thus partiicipate in China's revolution of 1911.
The landlord won the lawsuit against his tenants by the usual bribery of the magistrate; his tenants rioted, but were hunted down by the military governor's troops and fled to a local mountain, the Liu Shan. This withdrawal to a mountain stronghold was a traditional feature of peasant uprisings, celebrated in historical romances. The 'bandits', as they were now called, were captured and their leader, Pang the Millstone Maker, beheaded. Once again Mao felt that heroic deeds of the past had been re-enacted in actual, solid  events affecting his own country, his own village. Once again he saw the incident not as something apart from himself, but as an intimate personal concern. Injustice! Injustice! Would no one rise against this monstrous betrayal of virtue? History then began to appear to him as a grand tradition of righteousness, of rebellion in a just cause against tyrants and exploiters. From that time dates Mao's almost compulsory sense of identification with the downtrodden, the persecuted. 
The Chinese are traditionally history-minded,Chines memory being both specific and historical. Even in these childhood years Mao's conception of events and his relation to them is historical; it is not abstract, self-centred, alienated. This historicity he was to develop through the years, but is inherent in his make-up. For him no breach could exist between past and present, only a continuity. And he also had, like so many Chinese peasants, an excellent memory. Most Chinese can recall the names of at least several hundred personages, dating from 800 B.C. Through Chinese history; not only names, but their relationships, deeds and words. Chinese fiction is fictionalised history, with no attempt to disguise the fact. Tales of strategy and tactics, of how battles are won and political schemes concocted, are the backbone of the romances which Mao and millions of other Chinese little boys loed and continue to love. But where Mao would be different would be in his identification with revolt, especially with peasant acts of rebellion.
His mind was scientific. It reasoned naturally from cause to effect, and it reasoned that if such evil things happened, then there was something wrong with the system which allowed them.(...) 
The years 1908 to 1911 were turbulent. Everywhere widespread fierce rebellions erupted. Sun Yatsen's revolutionary movement was now followed all over China. Armed insurrection becam increasingly frequent; students now became radical teachers, taught in the schools of 'new learning' and spread the sentiment of national independence to the student body. They denounced the Manchu dynasty, denounced traditions; the pupils imbibed revolt as a part of the curriculum. The writings of Confucius were attacked; and as in every age of revolt, the incomprehension between the generations grew. The young knew that no adult could tell what the future would be; they were thrown upon themselves, the future theirs to fashion; but how? No classics, no ancient wisdom could guide them any longer. Only dissent, only revolt was a signpost to becoming. A total revolt against feudal society was in the making, through it appeared impossible at the time that 2.500 years of feudal tradition and the social system it had engendered would so swiftly succumb. (...)
Shortly after his marriage (possibly sparred by resentment at the coercion thus imposed on him) Mao Tsetung left Shaoshan to stay with a friend, an unemployed law student, in Hsiangtan. He walked to Hsiangtan, with some rice packed in a small pouch, and stayed there, reading, arguing, meeting radicals; perhaps his mother helped secretly, with a little money. Then as usual his father called him back and Mao Tsetung returned home. But he returned home more rooted in revolt than ever, more dedicated to a search for truth, more determined to 'learn from all sources'. In his life he would make many friends, seek out many teachers. Ideas were always to excite him;he would pounce on them, grow tremendously excited. Then he would start to re-examine, to test the idea by doing; this would reveal a flaw and Mao Tsetung would once again search, listen, read, try. In this quest he would go through many a metamorphosis, but his purpose would remain a search for truth, for reality, for valid principles to be translated into action.
“I began to realise that it was the duty of all the people to help to save .... my country.” Many years later he would say: “National liberation, a consciousness of national independence, is always the first step in any revolution; it is the first emotion in any revolutionary.” It was this emotion which possessed him now, fired him with the desire to study. 
The full-fledged rebel develops by fits and starts. All the ingredients for the questioning of every tradition, tenet, value were present when Mao Tsetung passed from childhood to adolescence to young manhood. A total involvement and concern with national affairs was considered 'normal' by the young students and teenagers then – though not by their elders. Already students had let great demonstrations against the shameful treaty of Shimonoseki of 1893, marking the end of the war with Japan, and China's defeat. In 1905 Chinese students had organised a boycott and protested against American immigration policies, discriminatory against Chinese. The young Mao Tsetung was brought, during his stay at Hsiangtan, in context with problems not only of local interest, but of national dimensions. He noticed that in all the books he had read there was nothing about the 'peasantry', while around him peasants rose in revolt, assaulted rice hoarders and demand land for the landless. The savagery of the repressions against the peasants was accepted by teachers and the intelligentsia. They were concerned but not personally involved. Why did they not feel personally involved? Mao was to struggle with this problem of personal involvement for many a year. It was to remain for him the touchstone of revolutionary advance: total identification with the exploited.[2]”

The basics of a possible development of revolutionary consciousness

Mao felt that heroic deeds of the past had been re-enacted in actual, solid  events affecting his own country, his own village. He saw the incident not as something apart from himself, but as an intimate personal concern. History then began to appear to him as a grand tradition of righteousness, of rebellion in a just cause against tyrants and exploiters. From that time dates Mao's sense of identification with the downtrodden, the persecuted.
His mind was scientific. It reasoned naturally from cause to effect, and it reasoned that if such evil things happened, then there was something wrong with the system which allowed them.
In all the books he had read there was nothing about the 'peasantry', while around him peasants rose in revolt, assaulted rice hoarders and demand land for the landless. The savagery of the repressions against the peasants was accepted by teachers and the intelligentsia. They were concerned but not personally involved. It was to remain for him the touchstone of revolutionary advance: total identification with the exploited.    

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[1] See Han Suyin, The Crippled Tree, Cape, London,1965, for an account of the railway movement in Szechuan,once of the factors that sparked the1911 revolution.

[2] Out “The Morning Deluge – Mao Tse Tung and the Chines Revolution”, Han Suyin (http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150182915389985).