Ideology, Telos, and the “Communist Vanguard” from Mao Zedong to Hu Jintao

Abstract

This work discusses why Marxist vanguard parties require ideology in their struggle to gain and maintain political power. Despite being considered theoretically inconsistent with classical Marxism and western vernacular, I chart etymologically how "ideology" came to China and proliferated during the Mao era as a positively framed term via, in all likelihood, Japanese renderings of Leninism. After discussing ideological challenges under Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, I explore whether Hu Jintao's scientific development and harmony concepts might be understood as ideological campaigns which-by synthesizing Maoist and Dengist approaches to ideologyeffectively address what otherwise be referred to as the Party's telos problem, and thus resolve in part the threat to the Party's vanguard claim.

Storiografia e politica: Enrica Collotti Pischel e gli studi sulla rivoluzione cinese in Italia (anni Cinquanta e primi anni Sessanta)

“…Al contrario, a mio avviso, è da sottolineare invece una certa continuità tra i due periodi storici, dal momento che, anche dal punto di vista dell'uso dell'ideologia, il principale fattore di successo per le riforme è stata proprio la capacità di mantenere un quadro ideologico coerente da parte del Partito comunista, impiegando enormi risorse per preservarne la rilevanza nel discorso ufficiale (Mahoney 2009;Holbig 2009;Wakeman 1975).…”

China and the WTO after New Imperialism

“…This has been discussed extensively elsewhere and it is impossible to recount those discussions in fufl here. Nevertheless, the key points from those discussions include: Deng sustaining the Party's Leninist system (Mahoney,2oiia:2); Deng's continuation of the Party's Marxist teleology ; continuities in CPC ideology from Mao to Hu Jintao with respect to strategic vision and the normalised practice of tactical adjustment, however radical (Mahoney, 2008); and, fundamentally, the continuation of shijian, which traditionally has been translated as "practice," but based on recent research, is now being translated officially by the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau in Beijing as the more appropriately Marxist term, "praxis," particularly in context of the Marxist epistemology that remains rooted in Chinese political thought (Mahoney, 2011b).…”