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China The Role of Ideology
In the early 1950s, Mao borrowed Stalinist social and economic
principles in promoting development. When these methods failed to
produce immediate and spectacular results, Mao adopted a masscampaign style of development derived from his experiences as a
guerrilla leader. When applied to post-1949 problems, however, the
style produced chaos. Mao's writings and speeches degenerated into
rigid dogma that his followers insisted be followed to the letter.
Deng, conversely, advocated a flexible and creative application of
Marxist principles, even claiming that Marxism, as the product of
an earlier age, did not provide all the means for addressing
contemporary issues. Rather, he advocated taking a highly empirical
approach known as "seeking truth from facts" in order to find the
most effective means of dealing with problems. In Deng's approach,
ideology itself was not the source of truth but merely an
instrument for arriving at truth by experimentation, observation,
and generalization.
To effect such a basic revision of Maoist ideology, Deng had to
de-mystify Mao and reduce the towering image of the "Great
Helmsman" to more human proportions. This was largely accomplished
in June 1981, when the party's Sixth Plenum of the Eleventh Central
Committee reassessed Mao's place in the history of the Chinese
revolution. In the years after 1981, the leadership nevertheless
continued to revere Mao's image as a revolutionary, nationalist,
and modernizing symbol, especially when that image aided
development of Deng's reform program
(see China and the Four Modernizations, 1979-82
, ch. 1).
Data as of July 1987
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