Li Hanjun's views on socialism

Abstract

This article examines Li Hanjun's views on socialism. Li Hanjun was one of the main founders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and expressed his vision and ideas of socialism during the 1920s. Like many other Communists in the early CCP, he was convinced that China should take a socialist road. Yet, in respect to how to realise socialism and what kind of socialist society should be built, Li held a view different from most of them. In his opinion, the governing institutions in a socialist society should be democratic and autonomous rather than centralist and bureaucratic; production and distribution should be administered and managed by an association of free and equal producers in the form of cooperatives instead of by the state and its officials. These views were quite distinct from the Soviet centralised state socialism and the dictatorship by a ruling elite. However, his ideas and designs of the economic and political institutions in socialist society were consonant with Marx on many points. Besides examining Li Hanjun's socialist views, this research also attempts to explore his philosophical inclinations and political orientation, in order to explain why he could conceive such special ideas of a socialist fabric.