Gandhi vs. Mao
Mao and Gandhi became key leaders in each of their countries, India and China. Although they both wanted very similar things to happen to their countries, they used very different tactics. The main points in their rules where economical, political and social. And all points affected their people in many ways.
First, to make each of their countries stronger economically Ghandi and Mao changed laws and broke rules. During the British rule in India there was a salt tax, which made it very hard for the people of china to buy salt, but it was illegal for them to make their own salt. Because Ghandi did not think this tax was righteous, on. In 1930, March 12th, he and eighty other people walked in the "salt march." The salt march was a walk of approximately 240 miles to the Arabian see where they could make salt, illegally. Many people found the "salt march" meaning full. And Ghandi became a larger economic leader. Another way that Gandhi made India more powerful economically was spinning and wearing the traditional clothing of India. By doing this all people of India did not purchase and western clothes, which knocked a chunk out of the British economy thus adding to end of British rule in India, and making the country of India wealthier because they were not buying western clothes owned, buy British shopkeepers. On the other hand Mao did not have a government to battle against to make china more powerfully economically. When Mao and his followers where on the long march they would go through small villages and towns taking the land away from the land owners and give the land to the peasants who worked on the land, who had been kept in poverty by the landowners for many years. This made Mao well known through out c...
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...estern and made a student army that killed and destroyed anything western. Mao and Gandhi made a great impact on their countries socially by getting rid of things like the caste system. But Gandhi has been looked up to by other people and has passed on what he did to make the world a better place. But Mao brought death when he thought that his country was getting out of control and that is not something to look up to.
Both Mao and Gandhi made their countries what they are today socially, economically, and politically. Both by taking the same things and using them in different ways. Gandhi on one hand was more peaceful and did not believe in war. And wanted the whole of the country to unite as one. Mao on the other hand, was more military induced and used war to sometimes get what he wanted. China and India could not be what they are today with out Mao and Gandhi.
During the Cultural Revolution Mao Zedong , people also knew him as Mao Zedong Tse tung was the Chinese ruler. He ruled the country during this time known as Chairman of the Communist Party of China. Moa was very well educated in Western and Chinese traditions. During the year 1918 Mao Zedong had a job as a librarian assistant at Peking University. He would call himself a Marxist in the of 1920 and he helped found the current Chinese Communist party Communist formed an alliance during 1923 with a man called Sun Ya sen and his Nationalist party. After that Mao Zedong quit the current job he had as a teacher to become a poli...
Mao Zedong will forever live on history as a revolutionary, not only in China but across the globe. There are very few communist nations today because of the many difficulties of having a homogenous population, which shares the same ideals. Mao was able to modernize and re-socialize his citizens in a short amount of time. He defined himself as the face of change in China. Mao’s vision of equality for all Chinese citizens has still not been achieved but it is well on its way. The only question lies in, does the end justify the means.
Mohandas Gandhi was a non-violent promoter for Indian independence.He was married young at 13,and went to London to go to law school.Gandhi got his degree there and was on his way to being a lawyer.He went to his first case,but couldn't even speak. Gandhi then got invited to South Africa from a businessman. Gandhi’s luck their was no good either.European racism came to him,after he got kicked off of a train,because he was “colored” and was holding a first class ticket.When Gandhi fought back because of it,was arrested and was sent to jail.After this, he became know as as a leader.Gandhi returned to India in 1896,and he was disgusted by it.British wanted them to wear their clothes,copy their manners,accept their standards of beauty,but Gandhi refused.Gandhi wanted people to live free of all class and wealth.Gandhi tried so hard and was more successful then any other man in India.They won independence in 1947. Gandhi’s non-violent movement worked because,Gandhi used clever planning, mass appeal, conviction, and compassion to win independence for India.
During the twentieth century Russia and China had revolutions that changed the government and stock market. Russia underwent numerous revolutions constantly changing the foundations of many integral parts of the government. China throughout the twentieth century had countless revolutions, never seeming to end even during both world wars. China and Russia both being communist primarily during the entirety of the twentieth century had similar economies.
Millions of peoples was falsely accused and persecuted during the political movements of the Mao period as the CCP focused on class struggle instead of economic development during the period and tens of Millions of peoples died due to starvation as there were widespread food shortages during the great leap forward movement. This raises the problem, does the cost of the revolution outweighs the benefit and if so, can the revolution still be considered a success. This is a very difficult question as the value of human lives cannot be quantified and therefore the comparison of cost and benefit automatically creates a very excruciating dilemma. However, one study done by Barrington Moore in his classic Social origins of Dictatorship and Democracy demonstrated the experience of India during the same period of time. India shares many similarities with China in terms of population, land size and geographic proximity and therefore the two countries’ economy is highly comparable. India, which did not go through a socialist reform, nor a land reform, thus a weak industrial base and low economic growth is currently in an economic situation where half of the country is ‘slowly starving to death’, that is, more than half a billion people are chronically malnourished and will die prematurely . Comparing China with India, it can be argued that the revolution brought more benefit than cost to China and its people and therefore is a success, although the misconducts and terrors created during the Mao era were indefensible and it can be contended that the socialist reform can still occur without the persecutions and famines, however, it should be kept in mind that history cannot be assumed and thus one may only analyze what has already
Mohandas Gandhi and Mao Zedong were two great leaders who succeeded in many ways by their actions and decisions. Gandhi was an Indian leader and Mao a Chinese leader. However, their approach to success, peace, and ultimately, a revolution, was very different. Mao favored peace through violence, and Gandhi favored peace through non-cooperation and standing up for what is right. He also believed that these changes will be accomplished by “conscious suffering”, was the way he put it. However, despite their differences, these two leaders were similar too. They were both very charismatic leaders who successfully made it through their revolutions. Mao’s revolution led to change in class structure while Gandhi’s revolution involved India as a country, and he wanted people to realize that working together is a great way to gain independence. While Mao and Gandhi both believed that each of their countries have the need of independence, their views differed when it came to the use of violence, development towards the revolution, and their thoughts on a caste system.
Both India and China have provided food for their nations due to their geography. According to Classical Civilization: India, both civilizations were agricultural societies with a majority of each population being peasant farmers. These farming families clustered in villages for help and protection. The village structure created a localist flavor and a family life due to agriculture. The increase in agriculture helped India and China create big cities because of their fertile land and good crop production. This helped each civilization evolve.
Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin were similar in what they claimed to be, but in actuality they were very different people. Although Stalin claimed that he followed Leninism, the philosophy that Lenin developed from Marxism, he often distorted it to follow what he wanted to do. While Lenin wanted to make a unified society without classes, with production in the hands of the people, while Stalin wanted to make Russia into a modern industrial powerhouse by using the government to control production. Lenin accomplished his goals through violence, because he thought achieving Communist revolution was worth using violence, with a ‘The ends justify the means’ mentality. Stalin also used violence to accomplish his goals, however Stalin used much more violence than was often necessary to accomplish his goals. Stalin continued even once he was successful in accomplishing those goals, as he did not stop hurting people, but if anything it gave him more power to hurt people even more. But, at the end of the day, although Lenin ruled for only a very short time, he did raise the standard of living, though there maintained a large amount of hardship. Stalin, however, transformed the USSR from a peasantry to an industrialized nation in less than a decade, he did it on the backs of his millions of victims, who died because of his harsh policies and many purges.
These two men were very demanding in obtaining what they thought should be the rule of a nation by their own personal control. Stalin and Hitler were very close in the same way that they had an aggressive vigor to force a type of commanding dictatorship into their respective countries. Each had a special army that they put in high regard politically to where they were considered special police agents. These armies were under different orders, but their main objectives were to stop anyone who opposed, or were thought to be in opposition to the head of state. Also, both Stalin and Hitler had ideas to improve the education levels and economic prosperity of their own countries, each trying to put their own at the top of the world in industry and commerce. Although Hitler and Stalin were opposed to each other’s own strategies and political stance on being a world dominator, they were very similar in the way to which they fought for political power.
Friedrich Nietzsche and Mahatma Gandhi, two mammoth political figures of their time, attack the current trend of society. Their individual philosophies and concepts suggest a fundamental problem: if civilization is so diseased, can we overcome this state of society and the sickness that plagues the minds of the masses in order to advance? Gandhi and Nietzsche attain to answer the same proposition of sickness within civilization, and although the topic of unrest among both may be dissimilar, they have parallel means of finding a cure to such an illness as the one that plagues society. Nietzsche’s vision of spiritual health correlates directly with Gandhi’s image of industrialism and the self-sufficiency. This correlation prevails by highlighting the apparent sickness that is ubiquitous in both of the novels.
Jung Chang, who wrote Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China was the first of her 3 generations to be raised under the Communist regime. Her parents worked for the Communist party and throughout her childhood she had to follow a set of rules that forced her respect orders under Mao’s rule. Like most Chinese people, she indeed followed Mao’s words and perspective, but in the end she knew that it was Mao that was responsible for China’s suffering. Her views are very biased because she hated Communists, and primarily wrote about the bad that Communism brought to China. She watched her family suffer for years, hating the Communist regime.
It was the events between 1946 and 1964 that strengthened communism in China. At the end of World War II, the Nationalist Party (GMD) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) raced for power in China. The chairman of the Communist Party was Mao Zedong and their army was known as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The Nationalist’s were led by Chiang Kai-shek and their army was the Kuomintang.
This was the result of a complete loss of nationalist credentials. The Sino-Japanese War, 1931-45, left a big impact on both KMT and CCP. Mao took advantage of the situation and gained support from the locals as a leader and was recovered, planned and prepared by that time. Mao had improved his leadership skills compared to the First Civil War, however, Chiang Kai-shek kept on failing.
The rebellion Mao claims to have manifested might have distanced Mao physically from his family but, traditional Chinese values were deeply ingrained, shaping his political and personal persona. His father's harshness with dealing with opposition, his cunning, his demand for reverence from subordinates, and his ambition were to be seen in how Mao demanded harmony, order, and reverence as a ruthless dictator. Yet, Mao, was also the kindly father figure for the people of China, as manifested in characteristic qualities of Mao's mother: kindness, benevolence, and patriarchal indulgence.
They had similarities and differences as to how they were to proceed with their ideas for their country. Their worldviews were not so different than it would seem because they both had some similar plans in order to get to the same desired outcome, which was an industrialized country. As an apology to Mao, they “signed a treaty of mutual assistance and economic aid” (Wood, 8, 15). There were some trust issues between the two of them, but “Stalin trusted Mao more than he trusted Chiang” since there were ties between the CCP and the Soviets which ensured they would protect each other as the Chinese communists would be there to defend them (Sheng 182).