(iPoster) Mao’s Mass Line and the Paradox of Democracy

• In Event: Poster Sessions: International Security II & Normative Political Theory
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Normative Political Theory

Abstract

Originally formulated by Mao during the Yan’an era (1936-1946) of the Chinese Revolution, the Mass Line was the guiding theory of Party governance of the Maoist era, most famously captured by the slogan “from the masses, to the masses.” The original theoretical formulation of the Mass Line emphasized listening to and learning from the common people, encouraging mass participation in politics, and making policies that serve the needs and interests of the people. Shortly after taking power in 2013, Xi Jinping revived the Mass Line as the “lifeline” of the Chinese Communist Party and as the foundation of the Chinese model of democracy. Unsurprisingly, few Western scholars take seriously the democratic rhetoric of the Mass Line. The dominant interpretation in the Western scholarship, largely informed by contemporary Party programmes, characterizes the Mass Line as a tool of mass mobilization, ideological indoctrination, and legitimacy generation for the Party’s authoritarian rule. Yet few scholars have engaged seriously with the Maoist Mass Line as an object of close theoretical study.

Based on an analysis of Mao’s early writings, I recover and reconstruct the original vision of the Mass Line as a theory of democratic Party governance. Specifically, I situate the Mass Line within its proper historical context of modern Chinese intellectuals’ pursuit of democracy, one of the driving motivations of the Chinese Revolution. I argue that the original theoretical vision of the Mass Line was Mao’s response to a troubling problematic at the heart of China’s revolutionary project, which is also one of the most profound problematics within Western democratic theory: the paradox of democratic founding. This paradox finds its most paradigmatic theoretical expression in Rousseau’s “Social Contract”: the emergence of a democratic republic requires the intervention of a superior founding figure – the “lawgiver” – who is uniquely equipped with the crucial knowledge of what a democratic society should look like and how to get there, and who therefore has the responsibility of educating the “blind multitude” and transforming them into a democratic citizenry. On the one hand, the pursuit of democracy is an egalitarian project that aims to give the common people the power of self-rule; on the other hand, the project of democratic founding is inevitably paternalistic and inegalitarian as it relies on the leadership of an intellectual elite who is to act as educator and founder. This tension between the commitment to equality and the inevitability of elitism renders the process of democratic founding inherently paradoxical.

Confronted with the challenge of how to construct a new, democratic regime, intellectuals of the Chinese Revolution – including Mao himself – recognized the necessity of an elite-led project of mass enlightenment to fundamentally transform the mentality of the Chinese people, and consequently emphasized the importance of revolutionary leadership under a small class of intellectual elites; yet they also recognized that the nature of this revolutionary project undermines the foundational commitment to equality, which is at the heart of democracy. It is to this paradox that the “Mass Line” provides a theoretically robust and innovative solution. In formulating the “Mass Line,” Mao found intellectual inspiration in the Confucian philosophy of learning, Deweyan pragmatism (which was introduced into China during the New Culture era, and which profoundly influenced the thought of young Mao), and Marxism-Leninism, each of which made a unique contribution to resolving the epistemic problem at the heart of the democratic paradox.

Mao’s Mass Line rests on a Confucian dedication to learning as the foundation of social change, a Deweyan commitment to a collaborative and experimental process of social problem-solving, and a Marxist-Leninist devotion to a mutually dependent relationship between theoretical knowledge, to which the Party’s intellectual elites claim epistemic authority, and practical knowledge, which are found within the everyday experiences of the ordinary people. Rooted in a robust faith in the wisdom of the masses and driven by an iterative process of mutual education, the Mass Line outlines a process where Party elites and the ordinary people engage in an egalitarian process of knowledge exchange and collaborative problem-solving that leads to the integration of theory and practice, Party and masses, and teaching and learning. This integration ultimately reconciles the tension between political elitism and political equality, and introduces the possibility of a democratic solution to the paradox of democratic founding. This original theoretical vision of the Mass Line provides not only a more nuanced understanding of a critical strand of Maoist political thought, but more importantly, new and meaningful insights into the idea of “Chinese democracy” and democratic theory more broadly.

Author

• Alissa Xinhe Wang, University of Toronto