The early writings and works of Mao, as translated in the first volume of Mao’s Road to Power is in many ways what I was expecting – letters to other revolutionary thinkers and individuals, musings on events in the west as the First World War took its course, meditations on China and its future, and more proactive declarations and calls to action. One idea that is somewhat prominent in his work that of the liberation of women – an aspect that surprised me, as it doesn’t seem to be an idea Mao would emphasize after his rise to power in 1949.
A few specific works in this volume paint a fairly clear picture as to his thoughts on the liberation of women – one of particular note is The Women’s Revolutionary Army1, written in July of 1919. While short, this work lays out in strong terms Mao’s thoughts on the traditional roles for women in society. He compares the makeup and clothing women are expected to wear are torture instruments and the brands of criminals, the jewelry on their hands to shackles, and describes families as their prisons2. What is especially unique about how Mao presents his thoughts on the liberation of women is in how it will be achieved – Mao states there is only one way to do so, and that way is through revolution, armed struggle and conflict2. This idea of women’s liberation only being achievable through armed struggle and revolt in many ways resembles the thoughts of the anarchist He Zhen and the implications of her concept of nannü, as analyzed by Lydia Liu, Rebecca Karl, and Dorothy Ko3. Nannü, a term that is difficult to directly translate to English without losing it’s unique codifiers, can be roughly thought of as defining women itself as a constructed class in a Marxist sense4. In presenting women as being subject to a system of class, Zhen’s form of liberation for women is singular and total – it is an anarchist revolution5.
Mao authored The Women’s Revolutionary Army as He Zhen was coming towards the end of her life, and had expressed her ideas fully at least a decade earlier – however, Mao as represented in Mao’s Road to Power does not seem to have any relationship with He Zhen, either direct or intellectually6 – something that seems curious given He Zhen’s influence during the late 1910s in China. Is Mao in The Women’s Revolutionary Army drawing on or being influenced by contemporary Chinese thinkers that he may have not even been aware of, or is he applying Marxist ideas of class to gender in a similar manner to He Zhen?
Bibliography
– Liu, Lydia, Rebecca Karl, and Dorothy Ko. “Introduction: Toward a Transnational Feminist Theory.” In The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory, 1–26. New York, UNITED STATES: Columbia University Press, 2013.
– Mao, Zedong, Stuart R. Schram, Timothy Cheek, and Nancy Jane Hodes. Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings 1912-1949. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 1992.
- Mao, Zedong, Stuart R. Schram, Timothy Cheek, and Nancy Jane Hodes. Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings 1912-1949. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 1992, PG353. [↩]
- Mao, Zedong, Stuart R. Schram, Timothy Cheek, and Nancy Jane Hodes. Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings 1912-1949. PG353. [↩] [↩]
- Liu, Lydia, Rebecca Karl, and Dorothy Ko. “Introduction: Toward a Transnational Feminist Theory.” In The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory, 1–26. New York, UNITED STATES: Columbia University Press, 2013, PG18-22. [↩]
- Liu, Lydia, Rebecca Karl, and Dorothy Ko. “Introduction: Toward a Transnational Feminist Theory.” PG20-21 [↩]
- Liu, Lydia, Rebecca Karl, and Dorothy Ko. “Introduction: Toward a Transnational Feminist Theory.” PG23 [↩]
- Mao, Zedong, Stuart R. Schram, Timothy Cheek, and Nancy Jane Hodes. Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings 1912-1949. PGV-XII. [↩]