Ideologies and states: the socialist challenge

The Extra-European WorldTerm 1, week 9Anne Gerritsen

Room H0.18a.t.gerritsen@warwick.ac.uk

Four leaders

Four leaders

Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung)1893-1976Leader of Chinese communist party

Kim Il-Sung1912-1994Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Fidel Castro1926-Cuban leader of the 1959 revolutionSecretary of the CCP

Jyoti Basu(1913-2010)Indian MarxistRuled West-Bengal from 1977 to 2001

What do they have in common?

•All leaders of extra-European communist parties•All leaders of communist states•All had exposure to the Western world•All were exposed to the world of agriculture•All had connections to the military

What do they have in common?

•Nationalist tendencies, perhaps originating with experiences of colonial occupation in their youth•Leaders of politically isolated states•Cult of personality•(Basu perhaps the exception in these latter cases)

THEMES OF THE LECTURE

1. Links between leadership of extra-European Communist Parties and education in the West

2. Exposure of these leaders to the largely agricultural backbone of the non-Western world

3. Experience of military struggle4. The nationalist dimension

EDUCATION1. Why is education significant for understanding communism in the

non-Western world?• European communist support came from blue-collar workers• Extra-European support came from intellectuals

2. Much of the world was ruled by European colonial powers• Needed loyal bureaucrats to serve the colonial administration• Educated promising individuals at Oxford, the Sorbonne, Leiden

3. Questioned the relationship between metropolitan theories and domestic realities in their homelands, and demanded rights for their own homelands.

Hồ Chí Minh (1890-1969) A Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister (1945–1955) and president (1945–1969) of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). From 1919–1923, while living in France, he embraced communism.

LIBERALISM TO MARXISM1. How did the transition from liberal nationalists to radical Marxists

come about?2. Students of the history of relations between the first and the third

worlds realised that capitalism was impoverishing the majority on a global scale.

3. There seemed to be a connection between imperialism and capitalism, and it wasn’t working in favour of the majority of the population in the non-European world

4. Socialism seemed to offer an alternative for understanding the relationship between imperialism and capitalism, and offer solutions

5. Promising young bureaucrats returned home as flaming Marxists.

IMPACT OF WORLD WAR I

Impact of the brutalities of the first World War: raised questions about how civilised Europe was and whether the Europeans were in any position to bring civilization to the rest of the world

Indian soldiers convalesce outside the Royal Pavilion. Over fifty thousand volunteered to fight for Britain in the First World War. Image courtesy of the Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove.

IMPACT OF WORLD WAR IEuropean administrators in the colonial world were recalled by their European

governments, and replaced by native administrators.Were promised a great deal of independence and responsibility, but these

promises were not kept in the interwar era.

German East Africa, for example, had been under German colonial administration, but was placed under Belgian administration in 1920, known as Ruanda-Urundi. The Belgians used the indigenous power structure, so that the largely Tutsi ruling class controlled a mostly Hutu population. The anger at the oppression and misrule among the population focused on Tutsi elite rather than the distant colonial power.

IMPACT OF WORLD WAR I

Peace Treaty Negotiations in Versaille in 1919. Woodrow Wilson offered self-determination of nations, but in practice their requests were denied.

Chinese protesters during the May Fourth Uprising, 1919

IMPACT OF WORLD WAR I

Peace Treaty Negotiations in Versaille in 1919. Woodrow Wilson offered self-determination of nations, but in practice their requests were denied.

Egyptian women demonstrating in the 1919 Revolution, precipitated by the British-ordered exile of nationalist leader Saad Zaghlûl

SOCIALISM IN ASIA AND AFRICA

A range of socialist and communist parties were founded after WWI.

These included:Argentina, 1918Great Britain, 1920China, 1921Cuba, 1921South Africa, 1921Japan, 1922India, 1925Vietnam, 1930

SOCIALISM IN ASIA AND AFRICA

In May 1925, strikes broke out in a number of Chinese cities, and workers protested against the Japanese and British manufacturers. The Chinese Communist Party played a central role in these anti-British, nationalist strikes.

IMPACT OF WORLD WAR II

1. Enforced the sense of weakness of the imperial powers (see what happened in France and Holland)

2. Failed promises to colonial adminstrations led to protests and conflicts

IMPACT OF WORLD WAR II

1. Enforced the sense of weakness of the imperial powers (see what happened in France and Holland)

2. Failed promises to colonial administrations led to protests and conflicts

Leader of the Indonesian National Party Achmed Sukarno (1902-70) demanding independence from the Netherlands in an undated photo. Indonesian independence from Dutch colonial rule was achieved in 1949 after a bloody struggle. (-/AFP/Getty Images)

IMPACT OF WORLD WAR II

1. Enforced the sense of weakness of the imperial powers (see what happened in France and Holland)

2. Failed promises to colonial adminstrations led to protests and conflicts

On 8 May 1945, an uprising against the occupying French forces in the Algerian town of Sétif resulted in the deaths of 21 settlers, and killed perhaps as many as 40,000 Algerians.

CASE STUDIES: CUBA

1. Fidel Castro started as a radical nationalist who wanted self-determination for Cuba

2. Castro started out with socialist inclinations, and quite strong economic ties with the US

3. 1959 Cuban Revolution, and turn to the SU

Che Guevara added a democratic socialist dimension

CASE STUDIES: CHINA1. Communist party in conflict with Chiang

Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party (GMD)2. Comintern (i.e. the internationalist organ

of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union) advocated collaboration with and support for bourgeois parties such as Chiang Kaishek’s Nationalist Party.

3. CCP and Nationalist Party (GMD) formed United Front in 1931 against the invading Japanese forces.

4. Civil War between 1945 and 1949, but led to 1949 CCP victory.

5. Development of Mao Zedong-thought (emphasizing the revolutionary potential of the peasantry)

6. In Marxist-Leninist-Map Zedong thought, peasantry takes on the role of the proletariat

Location of the first Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai, 1921

CASE STUDIES: PERU

¡PROLETARIOS DE TODOS LOS PAISES, UNIOS!

¡¡5 AÑOS DE GUERRA POPULAR!!PARTIDO COMUNISTA DEL PERU –1980 MAYO 1985

Proletarians of All the World, Unite!5 Years of People's War!!Communist Party of Peru 1980 May 1985

Note:•War as the pathway to revolution and the communist goal•Ongoing importance of Maoism•Based outside Peru