Mao’s iconoclasm was a fuller expression of Liang Qichao’s ideas of destructivism, expressed early in his exile to Japan. Mao took these ideas to their limits, creating a Chinese version of Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction.” Many years later, in a 1940 essay, Mao stated this contradiction most clearly in the famous line, “There is no… Read more »
While Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao set off to organize China’s cities along standard communist terms, Mao returned to his focus on Hunan peasants. He continued to articulate his belief that peasants represented the most viable source of revolutionary support and submitted this idea to the Party in his “Report on an Investigation of the… Read more »
Mao was setting up local communist cells in Hunan when he received the invitation to travel to Shanghai for the First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. Party founders Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao were unable to make it to that first meeting, and Mao’s attendance lent him higher standing in the party afterwards.