The Common Vision of the Rural Proletariat

Mao and Lenin hypothesized that a rural proletariat would develop out of the peasantry. In his essay on
The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899), Lenin exaggerated the development of capitalism in his nation by
saying that the village commune was in dissolution and that a rural bourgeoisie dominated the countryside. He
maintained that the capitalist farmer and the agricultural worker would replace the peasant. During the Great Leap
Forward of 1958-61, Mao attempted the industrialization of the countryside by calling for the construction of
backyard steel furnaces, a task ending in failure. Realizing that their premature attempts to spark a socialist
revolution of the proletariat had failed, the leaders once again reverted to revising Marxist theory in order to resolve
practical problems. When it came to land reform in the civil war era, Mao enforced different programs in different
regions, either radically confiscating land or reducing rent as specified in his letter to Liu Shaoqi on February 3,
1948.39 Mao won peasant sympathy during a period of struggle against Japanese imperialists and Chiang Kai-shek’s
government with the slogans “Anti-starvation,” “Anti-persecution,” and “Anti-civil war,” showing remarkable
likeness to Lenin’s slogan of “Peace, Land, Bread.” In The Present Situation and our Tasks, Mao suggested that the
key to victory over class enemies was the solution of the agrarian problem, a notion supported by Liao Kai-lung in
his statement “That the People’s War of Liberation could so speedily be brought to a victorious conclusion was due
in a large measure to the successful implementation of the agrarian reform programme.”