Intellectuals and Alternative Socialist Paths in the Early Mao Years

The Rectification Campaign of 1957 prompted a vibrant debate about Chinese socialism. This debate contained three analytically distinct perspectives on the intellectual, each corresponding to a specific vision of socialist development. The “legislator” perspective, championed by college students, demanded for intellectuals the right to help to define socialism. Leading intellectuals sponsored the “reformer” view, which argued that intellectuals were vital to improving governance under the Chinese Communist Party. The state’s “red-and-expert” ideal demanded intellectuals’ devotion to the working class and the acceleration of professional training for members of the working class. These perspectives promoted, respectively, a modernist, a traditionalist and a borderline Gramscian path of development—none of which was embraced by the Mao regime or post-Mao leaderships. Recovering these visions enriches our understanding of Chinese socialism; they offer powerful contrasts to extremes of both a subsequent Maoism and the current widening inequalities, official corruption and abuses.