A Study Of Marx 's Theory In The Vision Of Kuomintang (1927-1937)

The spread and revolution of Marxism played an important role in the history of Modern Chinese Thought. The Chinese Civil War occurred from 1927 to 1937,When Marx Theory and the Three Principles of People and the Liberalism coexisted. At present, the academia mainly focuses on the development of Marx Theory during this period from the perspective of the Chinese Communist Party(CCP). In fact, the Kuomintang’s(KMT) attitudes and methods toward Marx theory is also an important subject deserved to study.During the period of political split between the CCP and the KMT, the “riots”made by the CCP had a great relationship with Marx Theory in the eyes of majority of the KMT. Therefore, the KMT changed its attitudes toward Marx Theory and declared it as “heresy” and “fallacy”. The KMT Central Committee convened a few meetings and suppressed the publication of those Marx theory books to avoid its foundations of communication. A number of Kuomintang members also strongly urged the military suppression as well as the study of Marx Theory so as to reveal its flaws. In their view,imitating the Soviet Communist revolution was one of the important reasons for the riots of the CCP. Therefore, the application and development of Marx Theory in the Soviet Union had also become the important materials against carrying out the Communist movement in China. During this period, That the Communism in China was welcomed by normal people made the KMT be very worried. However, what was in fact the Communism in China then? whether Communism on earth came true?These questions then became the key topics for the KMT.In order to criticize Marx Theory, the KMT thought it was necessary to collectively criticize historical materialism and theory of class struggle. In their opinion, historical materialism was the philosophical foundation of Communism which Marx had protested, and also opposed to the doctrine of Sun Yat-sen’s Historical Conception of the Livelihood of the People. So if the KMT wanted to get rid of the people’s obsession with the Communism and to establish the belief of Sun Yat-sen’s Historical Conception of the Livelihood of the People, they had to criticize the shortcomings of historical materialism. At that time, The Kuomintang oftencriticized the doctrine of “economic determinism” advocated by the historical materialism, saying the historical materialism did not have the nature of science because this theory was not consistent with the social development. Since class struggle was deemed as the main method to realize communism, it was strongly criticized. The KMT believed that class struggle was not the power of the social evolution but for leading to hatred and discord. So no matter whether there were classes in China, class struggle was not suitable.Although the KMT tried to ban the spread of Marx Theory in China, it was not as they expected. The measures of suppression were quite severe, but eventually still failed. Of course, there were many reasons for it. But from the perspective of the KMT, the lack of theoretical construction should account most. Although the KMT severely suppressed Marx theory, the effect was not obvious. That Different factions of KMT had their own interpretations of the Three People’s Principles created by Sun Yat-sen led to confusion. All of these resulted in the insufficiency of theory and lack of the mainstream culture which led the social thoughts, not to mention it was hard to deny the vision of socialism. Therefore, when it could not be able to bear the burden of constructing the ideal society, what it did virtually gave the opportunity for the development of Marx Theory.