Communist Revolution Research Articles

Chinese Millets: native soil, the party–state, and art in contemporary China

Ever since Jean-François Millet (1814–75) was introduced to China in the 1920s through translations, Chinese artists’ fascination with him has resulted more from his life story than from the poor reproductions of his artworks. Millet’s focus on the imagery of the peasantry and his purported identification with the peasant made him a unique figure in the rise of a discourse on native soil, which conflates peasants, the land, the Communist revolution, and a distinctive Chineseness in art. This discourse first took form during the War of Resistance against Japan (1937–45) and continues to thrive in China today. This article examines the growing list of artists—from the well-known masters Gu Yuan (1919–96) and Luo Zhongli (1948–) to lesser-known artists whose professional work was supported by state painting academies and teaching institutions—who have been named the “Chinese Millets.” I propose that “Millet” continues to be effective as a trope in the discussion and imagination of art in China today because his life story provides multiple thrusts—the rapport with peasants, the simplicity and nobility of an artist’s character, an unflinching insistence on one’s own style in opposition to more fashionable trends—in support of a vague conviction of the vitalist force of the native soil. This simultaneously eases Chinese artists’ anxiety over their distinction in the international contemporary art world and echoes the civilizational nationalism increasingly promoted by the party state. Foregrounding the persistent phenomenon of likening to Millet in art discourse in China, this study reveals the challenges and dilemmas of an art world that simultaneously strives to rise in the global order and manages to work with an authoritarian state that both promises generous patronage and demands cooperation.

Losing LeninInst Internationalism in Claude McKay’s Lost Novel

Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik movement, believed that a flourishing Black proletariat consciousness was the catalyst needed for a Communist revolution in the United States of America at the turn of the twentieth century. Thus, the Bolshevik egalitarian ideology of antiracism attracted Black Americans and anchored support for the global Communist agenda of Leninist Internationalism.After Lenin’s death in 1924, his protégé Joseph Stalin becomes the new leader of Soviet Russia and signs and sustains a strategic arms alliance with Italy. In his Harlem-set lost novel Amiable with Big Teeth (AWBT), Jamaican-American writer Claude McKay chronicles how this decision places Stalin at odds with the Black American allies of Leninist Internationalism.Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini invades Ethiopia in 1935 and because Stalin remains committed to the Italo-Soviet Pact, the Black American community in AWBT views this commitment as an endorsement of the colonial suppression of Ethiopia’s Black sovereignty and thus a violation of Lenin’s antiracism ideology.With the demise of Leninist Internationalism in the Stalin era, AWBT argues that the Pan-Africanist agenda of Black-led organizations is more adept at forging antiracist and antiimperialist transnational bonds. However, Blackness is not a monolith and McKay’s lost novel must soon confront the uncomfortable reality that even within Black-led organizations, ethnic differences can easily supersede racial allegiance.AWBT is ultimately a story about the arduous, and sometimes impossible, task of building an ideological identity across diverse national borders and racial groups.

Violence, Exile, and Homeland in Visual Arts in the Slovenian Diaspora in Argentina

This article explores visual arts and literature in the Slovenian diasporic community in Argentina, founded by post-World-War-II refugees who fled Slovenia at the end of the war and the beginning of the communist revolution in Yugoslavia. Based on the ethnographic data collected among the Slovenes in Argentina and biographical interviews with selected Slovene artists, the article addresses how art and cultural production in the diaspora, imbued with social memories and themes of war, violence, mass executions in the post-war period, and exile from the homeland is encompassed in three levels of cultural policies: (a) an Argentinean framework of cultural pluralism that integrated migrant communities into the national identity and narrative, allowing them to preserve and express their ethnic and cultural backgrounds and identities; (b) a diasporic level that institutionalized specific themes important for diasporic ideologies, some explicitly related to violence, exile, and mass executions; and (c) a transnational level that facilitated the integration of artists from the diaspora into Slovenian and international “art worlds”. These cultural policies were often contradictory and required artists to shift between inclusion in the Argentinean art domain and the diasporic one, which favored partial social exclusivism.

​​Epidemic States​: Reading China’s Mao-era Public Health after Zero-COVID

This Review essay discusses three recent historical works about Mao-era public health, dealing with mass vaccination, anti-parisitic disease campaigns, and cholera epidemic response. The review identifies two key themes that cross-cut these works: the importance of pharmaceutical technology within the Mao-era, despite common assumptions that science and technology were repressed or declined during this period; and how new administrative reforms that reordered Chinese society after the Communist Revolution intersected with public health governance. Tracing how Maoist forms of state governance emerged in and through the response to epidemic disease, the review essay suggests that we can also examine China’s COVID-19 response as a crucible for implementing new forms of governing.

Cosmology and Vigilance: Political Vanguardism in Saint-Simon and Blanqui

This paper re-examines the idea of political vanguardism—long consigned to the dustbin of defunct scientific socialist ideology—to shed light on the theory of democratic representation. The discussion connects the use of the term “vanguard” by two prominent early socialist thinkers to what it terms the “cosmological” dimension of their writings. It shows how each author figured vanguard agency as fomenting different visions of the intellectual progress required for representative government, and that these visions were sustained by analogies to the origin and development of astronomical objects. The “utopian” socialist Henri Saint-Simon (1770–1825) first invoked the vanguard metaphor to describe a way of thinking about scientific progress that would naturalize a new governing elite. The revolutionary communist Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881) then appropriated the vanguard idea to reimagine scientific authority in a way that would preserve and expand citizens’ capacities to hold their representatives accountable. The article pursues three goals. First, it provides a revisionist history of well-known scientistic attempts to stabilize mass democracy in the nineteenth century, revealing how claims to scientific authority were contested from within a socialist republican tradition usually seen as complicit in such agency-inhibiting ideologies. Second, the concept of vanguardism it reconstructs from this history, as a response to the “usurpation” of a vigilant attitude between citizens and office holders, offers new resources for theorizing democratic representation. Finally, it draws attention to the importance of cosmological rhetoric in the history of modern republican and socialist political thought.

Religion, Gender, and the Chinese Communist Revolution

Religion, Gender, and the Chinese Communist Revolution

The Last Revolutionaries: The Conspiracy Trial of Gracchus Babeuf and the Equals by Laura Mason

Situating the trial of Gracchus Babeuf and his co-conspirators in its poisonous political setting, Mason provides a new perspective on the French Revolution’s downfall. She examines the Conspiracy of Equals and the show trial of the man whom Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels considered the first revolutionary communist, given maximum publicity by the corrupt ruling Directory in hopes of rallying public opinion for their centrist regime. Mason seeks to write “a history of the French Revolution for the twenty-first century,” worried about rising authoritarianism, faltering judicial integrity, and the erosion of democratic institutions (5).In this fluent narrative history, the first book about the Directory era readily available for wide reading, Mason places Babeuf in his historical context. After a brief overview of Babeuf’s rise from a feudal notary’s apprentice to a Paris-provisioning official and subsequent imprisonment after the Thermidor Coup against Robespierre and his allies, Mason turns to the troubled history of the Directory regime’s attempt to combat polarization on both the neo-Jacobin left and pseudo-royalist right while its own ranks became beset with corruption, careerism, and authoritarian manipulation. The content of Babeuf’s conspiracy, and even the trial, receive little detailed attention; instead, Mason examines how the Directory enthusiastically publicized the Conspiracy of Equals as a scare tactic against the political left, first publishing its papers and then paying stenographers to transcribe the courtroom proceedings and thus ensure the fullest possible coverage in France’s newspapers. Opposition papers, however, treated the Equals as heroes. An able scholar of French Revolutionary print culture, Mason’s extensive research captures the press’ vibrancy during an often-overlooked period. The book successfully explores the Directory’s bizarre politics and its ultimate failure, as regime candidates were badly trounced in the next election. Rather than seeking compromise thereafter, Directors undertook several coups to stay in power, before ultimately being unseated during and after Napoleon Bonaparte’s 18 Brumaire seizure of power in 1799.Though effectively deconstructing the trial’s political context, Mason pays surprisingly little attention to Babeuf’s ideas about equality or to the complex but powerful meanings that revolutionary conceptions had assumed over the revolution’s radical phase. She dismisses fellow conspirator Filippo Buonarotti’s memoir about Babeuf as hagiography without detailed refutation. She claims that Babeuf “misread” Enlightenment philosophers’ egalitarian writings, but she refrains from discussing the processes of creative adaptation and inspiration that had marked revolutionary thought (172). The Babeuf of this history seems little more than the Directory’s discursive creation.Mason also attempts to smother any hopes for either the Conspiracy of Equals or the Neo-Jacobin left, claiming that “the French Revolution was [already] over and the people had been defeated.” Yet even the dismantling of radical networks since Thermidor did not necessarily doom future movements, given the spontaneous uprisings that had marked the revolution’s earlier phases (100–101). She also seeks to distance Babeuf from the “neo-Babouvists” of the 1840s who helped to inspire Marx (227). The Last Revolutionaries is a dispiriting title for anyone interested in Babeuf’s legacies. Her avoidance of the revolution’s continued radical potential risks falling into the Directory’s own centrist trap.

Ballet in the Cold War: A Soviet-American Exchange, by Anne Searcy

Over the past two decades, one of the most vibrant subfields in the history of US foreign relations, as well as international history more broadly, has been the study of ‘cultural diplomacy’—that is, efforts by nation states to deploy cultural artefacts to serve diplomatic ends. We now have excellent studies of the way that various nations (though particularly the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War) used art, music, dance and film to advance their geopolitical objectives. Anne Searcy builds on much of this literature to offer a new history of the role that ballet played in Soviet–American relations during the critical Cold War window of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In four chapters, plus an introduction and epilogue, Searcy tells the story of four ballet tours—two Russian and two American—that took place against the backdrop of the extraordinary tensions of the late Eisenhower and Kennedy years. Prominent Cold War crises during this period included the Sputnik launch of 1957, the communist revolution in Cuba in 1958, the American U-2 plane shot down in Soviet airspace in 1960, the Bay of Pigs and the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, and, of course, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962—the most dangerous moment in the roughly 45-year history of the Soviet–American stare-down. Amazingly, there were Russian dancers touring the United States and American dancers touring the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. The book includes a chapter on each of these tours, as well as a chapter on the earlier tour of the United States by the Bolshoi Ballet in 1959 and the little-known tour of the Soviet Union by the American Ballet Theater in 1960, the first such visit by an American ballet company to the USSR.

Consequences of the Communist Revolutionary Ideology for the Catholic Community in Slovenia

The Second World War began in Slovenia on 6 April, 1941 with the occupation of the national territory by the German, Italian and Hungarian occupying forces and resulted not only in the efforts to liberate the country but gave rise to intense revolutionary events. By declaring the liberation movement its exclusive right, the Communist Party, until then banned and working underground, announced a fierce fight against anyone not willing to submit to its plans and leadership. It also used the Civil War to launch a revolution. Following the Church’s teaching, Slovenian Catholics were reluctant to go along with such conduct. Violence against ideological opponents of Communism began already in the autumn of 1941. At the end of war when the Communist Party and its satellite organizations took over the country, the violence against those who disagreed continued and culminated in the summer of 1945. Among them were many Catholic families, priests and members of religious orders. Pressure on the priests started to decline after 1960, yet the pressure on the Catholic laity grew stronger.

The Spread and Influence of the Communist Thought in Early Taiwan

The early communist movement in Taiwan was closely connected with the mainland, and had important influence and status. The early Taiwan Communist Movement was influenced by Japan and the Communist International, which gave birth to a series of social groups including the Communist Party, created a group of communist revolutionaries and disseminators who remained famous for thousands of years, promoted the spread of Marxist classics in Taiwan, and also triggered a large-scale movement of Taiwanese workers and farmers.

Marek Siemek as a Hegelian. Between Marx and Lukács

In our article we discuss the Hegelian reading of Marxism put forward by the famous Polish philosopher Marek Siemek. He exposed the deep but often unrealized dependence of Marxism upon Hegelian thought. This is particularly true with regard to Marxism’s attempts to develop a theory of philosophical self-knowledge. For Siemek, this philosophical dimension of Marxism is manifested in a dialectical critique of ideology, which then develops into a mature critique of political economy. The conceptual matrix of historical materialism is in turn fully utilized in the work of György Lukács, who for Siemek was the perfect example of ‘Marxist philosopher’, with all the ambiguities that this term entails. By analyzing these issues, we will also identify an evolution in Siemek’s own thought: from Lukácsian/Hegelian Marxism to ‘transcendental social philosophy’ indebted to Habermasian communicative rationality. His transformation raises a question: does the dialectical Hegelian Marxist tradition lead, in its very conceptual structure – with the primacy of mediation, to the practical outcome of moderate social democratic policy, rather than revolutionary communism? Therefore, in our conclusion we would like to reconsider the possible internal limitations of this philosophical approach in the context of social praxis.

‘Working at becoming a communist’: institutional belonging and political self-making of women in the Communist Party of India (Marxist)

ABSTRACT Gendered relations of power contribute to the signification inherent in political parties. The formal rules and informal processes through which hegemonic gender regimes are reproduced and contested in the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) are subjected to Feminist Institutionalist analysis here. In addition, the institutional belonging and political self-making of women party members are also assessed in the state of West Bengal. The experiential concepts of institutional belonging and self-making can enhance Feminist institutionalist research by identifying the processes that shape gendered behaviour of actors in institutions. The idealised revolutionary communist subjectivity that represents the institutional standard of appropriateness of gendered behaviour in the CPI(M) is explored. The co-constitutive relationship between institutions and political subjectivities is elaborated. The paper argues that the institutional belonging and political self-making of women in the CPI(M) are characterised by a politics of boundary-creation from as well as horizontal solidarities with fellow women colleagues.

Por um conceito de revolução surrealista

This article seeks, through texts from the magazines La Révolution surréaliste (1924-1929) and Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution (1930-1933), to think about what would be the “surrealist revolution” that Breton and company sought in the early years of the movement. This will be done by going through the ideas that the surrealists manifested about the revolution (both their own and that of others, more specifically, the communist revolution). In addition, it will also be necessary to reinsert, within surrealism, one of its most important dissidents, Antonin Artaud, who was expelled precisely because of the debate about what the “surrealist revolution” would be.

Reclaiming the Revolutionary

Reclaiming the Revolutionary

Maoism and Grassroots Religion: The Communist Revolution and the Reinvention of Religious Life in China, written by Xiaoxuan Wang

Maoism and Grassroots Religion: The Communist Revolution and the Reinvention of Religious Life in China, written by Xiaoxuan Wang

Personal Networks, Group Dynamics, and Local Party Politics: Luo Yinong and the Moscow Faction in the CCP, 1920–1927

ABSTRACT Based on newly available sources, this article explores the ‘Moscow faction’ (or ‘Moscow returnees’) in the Chinese Communist Party of the 1920s by focusing on the professional revolutionary path of one leading returnee, Luo Yinong. It provides a new perspective on the problems faced by the Moscow returnees, such as Luo, who combined party-building with efforts to instil Bolshevik (Leninist) norms into local party organisations, as well as in the minds and political practice of would-be Communist revolutionaries. By tracing the formation of Luo’s networks and their management of CCP work in Shanghai, the article illuminates the dynamic relationship between the Moscow-trained cadres and their local Communist organisations. Contrary to the common perception of events in this period, the new archival evidence shows that the Moscow returnees ultimately failed to transform the CCP into a centralised organisation.

A Platform for Working Class Unity? The Revolutionary Communist Party’s The Red Front and the pre-history of Living Marxism/Spiked Online in the 1980s

ABSTRACT In recent years, one of the most controversial stories on the British left is the trajectory of the far left Trotskyist group, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) to the libertarian/contrarian online publication Spiked!, via the magazine Living Marxism. The evolution of the RCP into Spiked! has been explored somewhat by journalists, but it has yet to be explored in depth by historians. This paper argues that in the history of the RCP, The Red Front is an often overlooked turning point for the party towards rejection of conventional left thinking in the 1990s and eventual rejection of Marxist politics.

Strengths and Vulnerabilities of Surviving Asian Communist Regimes from a Historical, Regional, and Holistic Approach

In this article, I propose a historically grounded, regionally framed, and holistically constructed framework and make three interrelated claims about the strengths and vulnerabilities of surviving communist regimes in Asia. First, these regimes’ resilience today has historical origins in the communist revolutions that founded not only the regimes but also modern nations and states. This foundation provided these regimes with ideological, symbolic, and organizational assets that are now deployed to continue their dominance. Second, these regimes have been evolving together, have come to each other’s assistance at critical times, and have continued special relationships today; therefore, their strengths and vulnerabilities must be examined historically and regionally. Finally, in contrast to much existing scholarship that focuses only on resilience, I argue that factors contributing to their resilience also contain the very seeds of their vulnerabilities. I highlight three such factors, including extensive state control of resources, ruling parties’ ability to manipulate ideologies, and their formidable organizations—these three together carry not only their strengths but also their specific vulnerabilities today.

Marek Siemek as a Hegelian. Between Marx and Lukács

In our article we discuss the Hegelian reading of Marxism put forward by the famous Polish philosopher Marek Siemek. He exposed the deep but often unrealized dependence of Marxism upon Hegelian thought. This is particularly true with regard to Marxism’s attempts to develop a theory of philosophical self-knowledge. For Siemek, this philosophical dimension of Marxism is manifested in a dialectical critique of ideology, which then develops into a mature critique of political economy. The conceptual matrix of historical materialism is in turn fully utilized in the work of György Lukács, who for Siemek was the perfect example of ‘Marxist philosopher’, with all the ambiguities that this term entails. By analysing these issues, we will also identify an evolution in Siemek’s own thought: from Lukácsian/Hegelian Marxism to ‘transcendental social philosophy’ indebted to Habermasian communicative rationality. His transformation raises a question: does the dialectical Hegelian Marxist tradition lead, in its very conceptual structure—with the primacy of mediation, to the practical outcome of moderate social democratic policy, rather than revolutionary communism? Therefore, in our conclusion we would like to reconsider the possible internal limitations of this philosophical approach in the context of social praxis.

The Perpetuation of Caste: An Exposition of Merleau-Ponty’s Classic Text—Humanism and Terror—to Elaborate Buried Possibilities in the Thought of Ambedkar

In our investigation into the persistence of caste, we attempt to build a preliminary framework of analysis to set the stage for a reading of Ambedkar’s posthumously published, unfinished manuscript, Buddha or Karl Marx. We see an uncanny resemblance between Ambedkar’s mid-twentieth century context in the newly independent democratic society of post-colonial India and that of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s post-Second World War Western European context and his intriguing attempt to justify communist violence. Ultimately, we argue that although one cannot use one context to understand the other on how to realise a communist revolution within a democratic, industrial capitalist society, there are lessons to be learned from both with regard to problems in the philosophy of history, historical time, and epochal shifts. The ultimate question is whether a new society that has no precedent in either the West or the East and everything in between is imaginable. Ultimately this article sets up the possibility to read Ambedkar’s text while returning to Marx’s (1990) Capital Vol. 1 itself, particularly on the ‘primitive accumulation’. Then we can be in a position to philosophise in the margins and beyond where Ambedkar leaves off on his brief but brilliant essay, Buddha or Karl Marx.