On The Reasons And Features Of Mao Zedong In Youth Accepting Marxism

After 1845 when the First Opium War had broken Chinese national threshold, China had been trapped deep in the crisis. The Qing government was corrupted and decayed, and the invader enslaved and exploited Chinese people. Facing to the crisis of perishing of nation and race, people with ambition couldn't stand it so they initiated revolutions, in which the Revolution of 1911 was the most successful one. It overthrew Qing government. But it is not so successful that it hadn't fulfilled the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal task. The range of politics and the thinking public had been so moldered that nothing could be optimized. However, the outer world never stopped moving, Marxism came into China with the news of the October Revolution.While the young Mao Zedong emphasized aspiration, he took it one of the most important tasks. He was deeply influenced by his teacher Yang Changji on this. He aspired to reform society. But he thought that he must obtain the truth of universe to aspire honestly. Otherwise, the aspiration could be blind. But how could we obtain the truth of universe? Mao Zedong considered that he had to seek the very origin, which is needed to reform the society thoroughly. However, in this time, aspiration was just his own pursuit; he had to find something which could the target for all the people, so called doctrine.So next he had to find the doctrine for reforming society thoroughly. What was doctrine? To Mao Zedong, it was the fundamental proposal of reforming society. It is programmatic and systematic. At the beginning, he did not have any clear concept about a variety of popular doctrines. He thought there must be one, which could lead others. He put all the popular doctrines together and did a lot of research, in the purpose of an optimum method for Chinese reforming.But the quest in theory could never be more profound and authentic than the test of practice. Confronted with the corruption of government, Mao Zedong believed in non-violence revolution and no bleeding revolution. He supported to make continuous advising, advocate society reforming, and propose mild changing. But after the failure of the movement of excluding Zhang Jingyao and the movement of autonomy of Hunan Province, he gave up all his illusion of trusting the government. He knew there would be no way except to destroy the society and reconstruct it totally. Meanwhile he met Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu and Cai Hesen, who would become his fabulous teachers and friends. Mao Zedong turned to Marxism quickly influenced by their ideas.The young Mao Zedong had showed his special features when accepting Marxism. First, he captured the theory of class struggle at the very beginning of interpreting Marxism. The theory of class struggle is the basic theory of Marxism. It is said that class struggle is the main motive power for social development. Second, he quite attached importance to the national conditions of China. He held culture views of Chinese and western cultures that national conditions research should have precedence over study abroad, which he succeeded to his teacher Yang Changji.