Aesthetics and Marxism
Aesthetics and Marxism

Author: Kang Liu

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2000-03-10

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0822380536

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Although Chinese Marxism—primarily represented by Maoism—is generally seen by Western intellectuals as monolithic, Liu Kang argues that its practices and projects are as diverse as those in Western Marxism, particularly in the area of aesthetics. In this comparative study of European and Chinese Marxist traditions, Liu reveals the extent to which Chinese Marxists incorporate ideas about aesthetics and culture in their theories and practices. In doing so, he constructs a wholly new understanding of Chinese Marxism. Far from being secondary considerations in Chinese Marxism, aesthetics and culture are in fact principal concerns. In this respect, such Marxists are similar to their Western counterparts, although Europeans have had little understanding of the Chinese experience. Liu traces the genealogy of aesthetic discourse in both modern China and the West since the era of classical German thought, showing where conceptual modifications and divergences have occurred in the two traditions. He examines the work of Mao Zedong, Lu Xun, Li Zehou, Qu Qiubai, and others in China, and from the West he discusses Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, and Marxist theorists including Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, and Marcuse. While stressing the diversity of Marxist positions within China as well as in the West, Liu explains how ideas of culture and aesthetics have offered a constructive vision for a postrevolutionary society and have affected a wide field of issues involving the problems of modernity. Forcefully argued and theoretically sophisticated, this book will appeal to students and scholars of contemporary Marxism, cultural studies, aesthetics, and modern Chinese culture, politics, and ideology.

Marxism in the Chinese Revolution
Marxism in the Chinese Revolution

Author: Arif Dirlik

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2005-06-07

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 1461639158

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Representing a lifetime of research and writing by noted historian Arif Dirlik, the essays collected here explore developments in Chinese socialism and the issues that have occupied historians of the Chinese revolution for the past three decades. Dirlik engages Chinese socialism critically but with sympathy for the aspirations of revolutionaries who found the hope of social, political, and cultural liberation in Communist alternatives to capitalism and the intellectual inspiration to realize their hopes in Marxist theory. The book's historical approach to Marxist theory emphasizes its global relevance while avoiding dogmatic and Eurocentric limitations. These incisive essays range from the origins of socialism in the early twentieth century, through the victory of the Communists in mid-century, to the virtual abandonment by century's end of any pretense to a socialist revolutionary project by the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. All that remains of the revolution in historical hindsight are memories of its failures and misdeeds, but Dirlik retains a critical perspective not just toward the past but also toward the ideological hegemonies of the present. Taken together, his writings reaffirm the centrality of the revolution to modern Chinese history. They also illuminate the fundamental importance of Marxism to grasping the flaws of capitalist modernity, despite the fact that in the end the socialist response was unable to transcend the social and ideological horizons of capitalism.

Marxism and the Chinese Experience
Marxism and the Chinese Experience

Author: Arif Dirlik

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-09-16

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 1315289318

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These essays consider the implications for Chinese socialism of the repudiation of the Cultural Revolution and the legacy of Mao Zedong as well as the meaning of the new definition and direction Mao's successors have given socialism. The themes have been selected for conceptual coherence within a socialist problematic of social change. Representing anthropology, art history, economics, history, literature and politics, various inquiries point in a twofold direction - the meaning of socialism for China and the meaning of Chinese Socialism for socialism as a global phenomenon - "meaning" not in some abstract sense but rather as it is constituted in the process of political ideological activity, which articulates and defines social relationships within China as well as China's relationship to the world.

Marxist Philosophy in China : From Qu Qiubai to Mao Zedong, 1923-1945
Marxist Philosophy in China : From Qu Qiubai to Mao Zedong, 1923-1945

Author: Nick Knight

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1402038062

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This book recounts the history of Marxist philosophy in China between 1923 and 1945 through the writings and activities of four philosophers: Qu Qiubai, Ai Siqi, Li Da and Mao Zedong. Two of these philosophers – Qu and Mao – were also political activists and leaders, but their contribution to this history is as important, if not more so, than the contribution of Ai and Li who were predominantly philosophers and scholars. The inclusion of Qu and Mao underlines the intimate connection between philosophy and politics in the revolutionary movement in China. It is not possible to speak credibly of Marxist philosophy in China without considering the political context within which its introduction, elaboration and dissemination proceeded. Indeed, each of the philosophers considered in this book repudiated the notion that the study of philosophy was a scholastic intellectual exercise devoid of political significance. Each of these philosophers regarded himself as a revolutionary, and considered philosophy to be useful precisely because it could facilitate a comprehension of the world and so accelerate efforts to change it. By the same token, each of these philosophers took philosophy seriously; each bent his mind to the daunting task of mastering the arcane and labyrinthian philosophical system of dialectical materialism. Philosophy might well be political, they believed, but this was no excuse for philosophical dilettantism.

Marxism, China, and Development
Marxism, China, and Development

Author: A. James Gregor

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 1351506706

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China has always been something of a mystery to Westerners. For one genera-tion, Mao Zedong and his followers were simple "agrarian reformers," while for another they were the "communist emperor and his blue ants." In the 1970s, some of the finest Sinologists believed there was much the United States could learn from Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution with regard to bureaucracy, criminal justice, health care, and mass education. By the 1980s, those same theo-rists asserted that Maoism was nothing more than a feudal fascism and had abso-lutely nothing positive to teach. Marxism, China, and Development provides a plausible explanation of these developments that have had such a powerful effect on the people of China for the past half century.The author describes and explains the strange collection of beliefs that made up the Marxism of Mao Zedong. He seeks to understand why the communist leader-ship of China, like that of the USSR, tried to spur economic growth by abandoning the market modalities common to developed economies. A. James Gregor's con-ceptual framework is both original, and makes more comprehensible the history of Marxism and the history of China. Among the major topics he covers are imperi-alism, political democracy, economics, and alternatives to Maoism and Marxism for China.While it is unlikely that our understanding of so complex a series of events as modern Chinese history will soon become less controversial, Marxism, China, and Development's clear, concise explanations will clarify some perplexing areas, and make the new turns in Chinese political economy more understandable. This is a monumental effort at theory construction that will be of interest to political scien-tists, economists, sociologists, and Sinologists.

China and Global Capitalism
China and Global Capitalism

Author: L. Chun

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2013-12-05

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1137301260

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In this concise historical and conceptual analysis of China's evolving position in a world defined predominantly by global capitalist development, Lin offers a critical review of relevant debates and discusses the imperative and feasibility of a socialist Chinese model, reconstructed, as an alternative to standardized modernity at an impasse.

Chinese Marxism
Chinese Marxism

Author: Adrian Chan

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2003-06-29

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 9780826473073

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This groundbreaking study of Chinese Marxism examines the ideology and praxis of Marxism as it has developed in China from its earliest beginnings to current debates. This is the first systematic, full-length analysis of the development and nature of Marxist ideology in China. Adrian Chan challenges established scholarship in both the West and China, which continues to be overshadowed by Cold War dogma and party orthodoxy, respectively. It has long been argued that Chinese Marxism was merely an offshoot of Soviet thought blended with ill-defined traditional Chinese ideas. Using previously neglected Chinese sources--including newspapers, political journals and communist party documents--Chan refutes this. Showing how the first Chinese revolutionaries were directly influenced by the writings of Marx, Chinese Marxism argues that Bolshevism was a secondary influence on Chinese communist thought. Mao himself drew upon Marxian themes in the creation of party orthodoxy. In doing so he signalled his differences from Lenin and Stalin on important issues of theory and practice.However, not all party leaders accepted this Marxian praxis. This has led to continuous conflict between proponents of Maoist Marxism and Soviet-type scientific Marxism-Leninism. Chinese Marxism presents detailed studies of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution to illustrate the consequences of this ongoing ideological conflict, and brings the story up to the present day with an analysis of the current Thermidorean Reaction and the controversial embracing of Confucianism.

The Communist Party of China and Marxism, 1921-1985
The Communist Party of China and Marxism, 1921-1985

Author: Laszlo Ladany

Publisher:

Published: 2018-03

Total Pages: 592

ISBN-13: 9781849049108

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Without an understanding of the Communist Party no one can understand the China in which the Party has dominated the country. This book follows the development of the Communist Party and of Marxism in China from the early years. For the years 1921-49, it relies mainly on revelations in the Communist press of the early 1980s, when Chinese historians of the Party were relatively free to write. In relation to the People's Republic, beginning in 1949, it summarises what was reported by the author in China News Analysis. This is essentially the story of the Chinese Communist Party in its own words.

Contemporary Chinese Political Thought
Contemporary Chinese Political Thought

Author: Fred Reinhard Dallmayr

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2012-06-21

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0813136423

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Westerners seem united in the belief that China has emerged as a major economic power and that this success will most likely continue indefinitely. But they are less certain about the future of China's political system. China's steps toward free market capitalism have led many outsiders to expect increased democratization and a more Western political system. The Chinese, however, have developed their own version of capitalism. Westerners view Chinese politics through the lens of their own ideologies, preventing them from understanding Chinese goals and policies. In Contemporary Chinese Political Thought: Debates and Perspectives, Fred Dallmayr and Zhao Tingyang bring together leading Chinese intellectuals to debate the main political ideas shaping the rapidly changing nation. Investigating such topics as the popular "China Model", the resurgence of Chinese Confucianism and its applications to the modern world, and liberal socialism, the contributors move beyond usual analytical frameworks toward what Dallmayr and Zhao call "a dismantling of ideological straitjackets." Comprising a broad range of opinions and perspectives, Contemporary Chinese Political Thought is the most up-to-date examination in English of modern Chinese political attitudes and discourse. Features contributions from Ji Wenshun, Zhou Lian, Zhao Tingyang, Zhang Feng, Liu Shuxian, Chen Ming, He Baogang, Ni Peimin, Ci Jiwei, Cui Zhiyuan, Frank Fang, Wang Shaoguang, and Cheng Guangyun.

The Mandate of Heaven
The Mandate of Heaven

Author: Nigel Harris

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Published: 2015-09-07

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 1608465101

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For radicals in Europe and North America, the anti-imperialist—and Chinese—revolutions continued the great task of 1789, 1848, and 1870, the “bourgeois revolution” in Marx’s terms, and the creation of nations that would release the energies and unity of purpose to create new worlds of prosperity and freedom. The nationalist focus led to an emphasis on autarkic development—the nation, it was said, already possessed within its own boundaries all the requirements and resources to match the accomplishments of global civilization. The overthrow of empire in the 1950s and 1960s—of which the coming to power of the Chinese Communist party in 1949 was a important part—seemed to augur a new era in world history, one in which the majority of the world’s population secured liberation. There was perhaps a sense in which this was true, but the reality for the majority was far removed from this giddy hope. And in the case of the ordinary Chinese, the newly “liberated” regime proved far more brutal and exacting than those that it had replaced (which also attained high standards of brutality and injustice). In China the great famine of 1958–62 was only the most spectacularly cruel and gratuitous product of that new order. For the former inhabitants of the old empires, national liberation turned out to be not liberation of all, but the creation of a new national ruling class, as often as not exploiting its position at home to make fortunes then smuggled abroad.