5 - Party Discipline

Summary

This chapter charts the development of frameworks and terminology with which revolutionary memory would be constructed during the republic. It begins with Guomindang efforts to tame May Fourth energies, allying the student movement to party-led workers and peasant movements, and tethering them to the evolving organs of state power. With the formation of the United Front between the Guomindang and Communist Party in 1924, May Fourth’s political groundwork would give way to an era of formal national construction (jianshe) when perceptions of rural society would crystallize within a revolutionary program. Originating in shared communications offices in Canton during the United Front, what began as rhetorical devices tested over 1926 in Mao’s strategic texts, such as lieshen (evil gentry), crystallized within months into class designations. The chapter then turns to the field of political journals based in Shanghai in the late 1920s, focusing on Guomin gonglun (The Citizens' Opinion). The interaction of social-scientific study with political mobilization gave wide currency to shorthand terms for understanding rural communities, one that pitted an evil gentry against a generalized peasantry. Moral language originally used to describe social injustices was refashioned as a tool for policing party discipline.