"Red and Expert": The Politico-Ideological Foundations of China's Great Leap Forward

For all its ostensible novelty and uniqueness, Communist China's Great Leap Forward of 1957-60 may best be understood as a convergence of two inveterate strands of Communist developmental strategy. Originating in Stalinist tradition of from above and Maoist tradition of mind over matter, respectively, these two strands, each with its own characteristic socio-political perceptions and prescriptions, lay at heart of programs and policies which comprised Great Leap Forward. The present study will focus on one such program, so-called red-expert campaign, and one such policy, policy of letting politics take command, in an attempt to demonstrate both historical continuity of two strands and causes of their convergence in 1957-60 together with implications of this convergence for Chinese Communist political style. Historical Origins and Continuity: One of basic tenets of Marxism holds that class contradictions are motive force of socio-economic development in that they give rise to war and revolution, and thereby hasten unfolding of historical dialectic. But in 1927 Stalin was faced with a situation in Russia wherein, at least in theory, a classless society already existed, one in which there were no longer supposed to be any fundamental tensions. Since such tensions were seen to constitute driving force of social development, their absence might, it was feared, portend halt of Soviet economic construction unless new developmental forces could be discovered and utilized by regime. Stalin found answer to this dilemma when he distinguished between two qualitatively distinct types of leap. In an antagonistic class society, a dialectical leap took form of a violent explosion (i.e., revolution) accompanied by overthrow of existing regime; in a socialist society, such leaps were alleged to occur much more gradually, without necessary destruction of state machinery.' Stalin could find examples of such novel leaps in social development in Stakhanov movement and in collectivization of agriculture. With regard to these phenomena he coined phrase revolution from above, because the revolution was accomplished on initiative of existing power with support of bulk of peasantry.2