Mao Zedong Criminal Philosophical Thoughts

Mao Zedong's philosophical thinking on criminal law, which basically originates form the theories in the same field advanced by Marx, Engels and Lenin, the dialetics from the traditional Chinese culture of criminal law, bears its own features from development to maturity. That criminal law is a tool for class opression constitutes the essential part of Mao Zedong's noumenal viewpoint. Justice and order are the basic values, the theories concerning two types of contradiction, the ideas of criminal policy and the combination of punishment with leniency comprise Mao Zedong's criminal policy. Penalty in essence is a legal means employed by the rulers to maintain the public order for self-protection. It's true aims are retribution and prevention. The perspectives on death penalty, imprisonment and public control and the theory on presevation of with the fewest capital punishments reflect Mao Zedong's understanding of the goal and function of penalty. There are varied causes for crimes due to different social systems. Penalty itself, together with the social policy with takes all factors into consideration and sees to it that each is in his proper place, guards against crimes. Reforming through labor is Mao Zedong's guiding ideology about reforming criminals. Mao's philosophical thinking on criminal law contains profound and rich polosophical implication, shines with dialectics and is of great historical significance. Finally, the author intends to interprete the significance of Mao Zedong's philosophical thinking on criminal law in the present age in terms of the theory on legal system modernization and the basic tenet of modern criminal law. It is believed that scientific idea viewpoint upon crime, order as well as criminal law should be acquired to carry out the criminal policy-criminalization and decriminalization.