Revolutions as Organizational Change: The Communist Party and Peasant Communities in South China, 1926–1934 9789888208395, 988820839X

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Map of Chinese provinces
Introduction
1. Contrasting Patterns of Two Agrarian Revolutions
2. Contending Theories of Agrarian Revolution
3. Community as an Organization
4. Patrilineally Organized Jiangxi Peasant Communities
5. Paramilitarily Organized Hunan Peasant Communities
6. Communal Organizations and Agrarian Revolutions
7. An Organizational Theory of Agrarian Revolutions
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

REVOLU T I O N S as O R G A N I Z AT I O N A L CHANGE The Communist Party and Peasant Communities in South China, 1926–1934

BAOHUI ZHANG

Revolutions as Organizational Change

Revolutions as Organizational Change

The Communist Party and Peasant Communities in South China, 1926–1934

Baohui Zhang

Hong Kong University Press The University of Hong Kong Pokfulam Road Hong Kong www.hkupress.org © 2015 Hong Kong University Press ISBN 978-988-8208-39-5 (Hardback) All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound by CTPS Digiprints Limited in Hong Kong, China

Contents

List of Tables

vii

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

1

1.

Contrasting Patterns of Two Agrarian Revolutions

11

2.

Contending Theories of Agrarian Revolution

35

3.

Community as an Organization

53

4.

Patrilineally Organized Jiangxi Peasant Communities

75

5.

Paramilitarily Organized Hunan Peasant Communities

95

6.

Communal Organizations and Agrarian Revolutions

119

7.

An Organizational Theory of Agrarian Revolutions

139

Bibliography

155

Index

173

Tables

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7

Membership of peasant associations in Hunan Composition of the Red Fourth Army Leaders with an upper-class background in Guangchang County Leaders with an upper-class background in the Le’an County Soviet Peasant composition in Hunan and Jiangxi Peasant composition in Fujian Comparison of rent rates in Hunan and Jiangxi Rent rates in southern Jiangxi Rent rates in western Fujian Major exports of Jiangxi in 1904 Paige’s typology of agrarian conflicts

15 28 29 30 36 36 36 37 37 42 50

Acknowledgments

This book started as my PhD thesis for the Government Department of the University of Texas at Austin. Here I owe a deep debt to my supervisor, the late Gordon Bennett. In fact, it was his graduate seminar on comparative revolutions that triggered my interest in this most fascinating topic for social scientific inquiry. My thesis benefited tremendously from his keen insights and his command of the core literature on revolutions of all shades and types. As an accomplished China specialist, his familiarity with the great Chinese revolution of the twentieth century also helped me sharpen my focus and ask the most pertinent research questions. I also want to thank the Government Department of the University of Texas at Austin for providing me many years of financial support that enabled me to complete this thesis. For the same reason, I owe a debt to the Sun Yat-sen Education Fund, based in Taiwan, for awarding me a PhD fellowship that assisted with the writing stage of this research project. I dedicate this book to my late father, Zhang Xilin, who encouraged me to turn my PhD thesis into a book. He would be very happy to see its publication if he were still with us. I also deeply appreciate my family’s sacrifice in the past few years. My research and teaching have made my absence at the dinner table regular and frequent. So I want to thank my wife and son for their generous support, which allowed me to devote more time to this book project. Lastly, I want to thank Christopher Munn, former associate publisher of Hong Kong University Press, for his kind support of this book, without which this publication would not have been possible.

Map of Chinese provinces, http://d-maps.com/carte.php?num_car=17503&lang=en

Introduction

Peasant revolutions in the twentieth century played a major role in shaping the course of world history. Peasants, identified by Marx as a human species facing extinction in the face of rapid industrialization, in fact became one of the primary forces of social change in this century. As Barrington Moore observes, “No longer is it possible to take seriously the view that the peasant is an ‘object of history,’ a dying class over whom progress is about to roll.”1 Instead, various kinds of peasant movements and, particularly, peasant revolutions have transformed the world. The great Chinese revolution of the twentieth century has been seen as a classic peasant-based revolution. Moreover, it also represents the archetypical revolution that was “made” by revolutionaries. Traditional interpretations tend to emphasize the key role of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) mobilization of the peasant population. As Robert Marks points out, studies of the origins of the Chinese revolution focus almost entirely on Communist organization and mobilization tactics: “nearly all interpretations place its origins anywhere but in the rural society” because these studies place “explaining the Chinese Communist success at the forefront.”2 However, this perspective overlooks the critical role of peasant communities in the making of revolutions. As Timothy Wickham-Crowley argues in his highly acclaimed study of peasant revolutions in Latin America, “The success of revolutionaries in mobilizing the peasantry depends primarily on the preexisting nature of peasant culture and social structure, and only secondly on the actions of the revolutionary themselves.”3 My research, by employing a macrohistorical comparative strategy, examines how the pre-existing social structures of peasant communities facilitated or impeded the CCP mobilization. Through a study of two important peasant revolutions in southern China, I propose a new organizational approach to examine how the different ways 1. 2. 3.

See Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), pp. 504–5. Robert Marks, Rural Revolution in South China: Peasants and the Making of History in Haifeng County (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), p. xi. Timothy Wickham-Crowley, Exploring Revolutions: Essays on Latin American Insurgency and Revolutionary Theory (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1991), p. 15.

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Revolutions as Organizational Change

that rural communities organized in response to environmental challenges contributed to agrarian revolutions. Historically, peasant communities in many parts of the world were regulated by powerful cooperative institutions. The purpose of these communal organizations was to organize and coordinate collective actions to confront environmental challenges. I argue that agrarian revolutions can be caused by peasants’ attempts to restructure unjust and illegitimate communal organizational orders and establish new rules for community cooperation. In contrast, legitimate communal organizational orders can powerfully constrain the mobilization by outside revolutionary agents such as the CCP. The established view of the Chinese case as a classic revolution “made” by revolutionaries assumes that the CCP practicing the same mobilization tactics would achieve the same effects anywhere. Instead, this study, which takes the new perspective of peasant rebellions as attempted efforts at communal organizational change, shows that the pre-existing social structures of peasant communities can either facilitate or impede attempts at mobilization by outside revolutionary organizations. As Elizabeth Perry points out in her study of peasant rebellions in northern China, by focusing on the mediation of social structure in rural communities, we can dispense “with any notion of a uniform peasant mentality capable of explaining rural rebellion.”4 This research, by explaining different outcomes of CCP mobilization in southern China, can shed new light on the Chinese Communist revolution in the twentieth century that effectively changed world history.

A Puzzle by Two Peasant Revolutions I started this research project when I was preparing a PhD dissertation that used a CCP-centered perspective to analyze the Communist revolution in Jiangxi Province in the early 1930s. I intended to examine the interactions between the Communists and peasants in what was considered a classic CCP-mobilized agrarian revolution. However, while I was digging through the historical materials at the Hoover Institute of Stanford University, I discovered an entirely different picture of peasant revolutionary behaviors in Jiangxi—behaviors that were conservative even under heavy-handed mobilization by the CCP. This pushed me to broaden my research to an earlier peasant revolution in neighboring Hunan Province during the mid-1920s. There, I found that peasants engaged in a radical political and socioeconomic restructuring of their communities in the absence of direct outside mobilization. I was then confronted with a puzzle presented by these two important peasant revolutions in southern China. Socioeconomic conditions in the two provinces, such as the class composition of rural populations, land holding and distribution, 4.

Elizabeth Perry, Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China, 1845–1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1980), p. 250.

Introduction

3

type of economic system, and degree of commercialization, were strikingly similar. Puzzlingly, although outside mobilization from the Communist Party was largely absent in Hunan, peasant revolutionary behaviors were radical and violent. In the Jiangxi case, however, despite intense mobilization by the CCP, peasant behaviors remained conservative. As Ronald Waterbury observes, in exploring the causes of peasant revolutions, it is as important to understand why some peasants are not revolutionary as it is to understand why some are revolutionary. It is important to understand why some “fought and died for change,” while others “remained passive or joined the fight to defend the status quo.” According to him, by analyzing “the reactionary, or at best neutral,” role of some peasants “in comparison with the fervent revolutionary role” of other peasants, “we might be able to better understand the conditions under which peasants will or will not make the revolution.”5 The two revolutions also present a puzzle because classic theories of agrarian revolutions cannot explain their different patterns. To understand the dynamics of agrarian revolution, interest in the study of peasant revolutions proliferated after the Second World War. Particularly, heavy American involvement in the revolutions in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and 1970s caused a major surge of interest in agrarian revolutions among American social scientists, who laid the theoretical foundations of the field. Major works include Eric Wolf ’s Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (1969), Joel S. Migdal’s Peasants, Politics, and Revolution (1974), Jeffrey M. Paige’s Agrarian Revolutions (1975), James C. Scott’s The Moral Economy of the Peasant (1977), Samuel L. Popkin’s The Rational Peasant (1978), and Theda Skocpol’s States and Social Revolutions (1979). These seminal works examine agrarian revolutions from diverse perspectives, greatly advancing our understanding of the causes and dynamics of peasant revolutions and their relationship to changes in the world. The moral economy approach, as represented by Scott, Wolf, and Migdal, argues that intruding capitalist market forces destroyed the old subsistence ethic of traditional communities and caused peasant rebellions. However, the economic systems of Hunan and Jiangxi were similarly commercialized, and both had significant market elements long before the intrusion of imperialistic capitalism. Rational choice theory, represented primarily by the work of Popkin, argues that outside revolutionary organizations need to offer peasants concrete and selective benefits to induce them into the revolutionary process. However, even though the CCP practiced intense mobilization in Jiangxi and indeed offered many selective benefits to peasants, they remained passive and conservative. In contrast, even though the CCP was barely involved in the Hunan revolution at local levels and could not

5.

Ronald Waterbury, “Non-revolutionary Peasants: Oaxaca Compared to Morelos in the Mexican Revolution,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 17, No. 4 (1975), p. 411.

4

Revolutions as Organizational Change

have delivered any concrete and selective benefits, peasants nonetheless waged a great revolution in the countryside. Structural theories also have an important place in the study of revolutions. One tradition of the structural approach focuses on the power structures within peasant communities. This tradition, represented by the work of Skocpol, argues that rebellion is only possible when peasants enjoy some tactical power and political autonomy. However, this view cannot explain the conservative behavior of Jiangxi peasants, as the CCP and its Red Army enjoyed political-military hegemony in the region and peasants could have easily risen up against the landed upper class. Another tradition of the structural approach, represented by Jeffrey Paige and Arthur L. Stinchcombe, focuses on the structure of economic relationships between cultivators and noncultivators. Different agricultural systems embody different structures of economic relationships, and only some systems have tendencies for radical peasant political action. The tenancy system, which involves a zero-sum economic relationship between tenants and rentiers, generates structural dynamics for agrarian revolution. However, the tenancy system predominated in both Jiangxi and Hunan, and the percentages of tenants and owner-tenants in their peasant populations were almost identical. The theory thus cannot explain why peasants in the two provinces demonstrated different revolutionary behaviors.

An Organizational Approach To explain this puzzle, I employ an organizational approach that examines how the pre-existing social structures of rural communities facilitate or impede peasants’ revolutionary tendencies. Specifically, I analyze the role of village cooperative institutions designed to confront environmental challenges by means of collective action. Different sources of cooperation—voluntary cooperation by peasants of roughly equal resources and imposed cooperation by lords or external power—led to variations in communal organizational principles along four dimensions: organizational ideology, decision making and the sources of elites, control mechanisms, and interest redistribution. I explore how these different communal organizational principles influenced peasants’ perceptions of the legitimacy of their communal orders and shaped their revolutionary tendencies. I argue that peasants can cause agrarian revolutions in order to restructure illegitimate communal organizational orders and establish new rules for community cooperation. In essence, we can see some agrarian revolutions as attempts at organizational change. In Jiangxi, the community response to the environmental imperatives of a “frontier society” in a resource-poor region resulted in a distinctive, corporate lineage–centered communal organizational system. In Hunan, the community response to the social environment of peasant rebellions and state breakdown in the mid-nineteenth

Introduction

5

century led to the militarization of the communal organizational context through a widespread militia system. These alternative organizational models critically defined communal social structures and effectively mediated intraclass relationships and peasant class consciousness. As a result, communal social structures in Hunan and Jiangxi possessed very different legitimacy among peasants and led to their contrasting revolutionary behaviors.

Macrocausal Comparative-Historical Research This study of two peasant revolutions in southern China is an example of what Skocpol calls “macro-analytic comparative-historical social science,” which looks at historical trajectories in order to study social change.6 As she and Margaret Somers point out, macroanalytic comparative history has a profound impact on the social sciences. This tradition of social scientific inquiry “uses comparative history primarily for the purpose of making causal inferences about macro-level structures and processes.”7 The macrosocial topics covered by this study tradition include revolutions, religious evolution, political development, economic modernization, patterns of collective violence, and the rise and fall of empires.8 Influential works in this tradition include Barrington Moore’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966), Charles Tilly’s The Formation of National States in Western Europe (1975), and Theda Skocpol’s States and Social Revolutions. According to Skocpol and Somers, macrocausal comparative-historical research seeks to develop “new causal generalization to replace invalidated ones,” and the strategy is to compare two or more cases by specifying “configurations favorable and unfavorable” to the particular outcomes researchers are trying to explain.9 As they point out, macrocausal comparative-historical research strategy “is, indeed, a kind of multivariate analysis to which scholars turn in order to validate causal statements about macrophenomena for which, inherently, there are too many variables and not enough cases.”10 Normally, macrocausal comparative-historical research proceeds by selecting historical cases to “set up approximations to controlled comparisons.”11 As Skocpol and Somers put it, macroanalytic comparative history “has the considerable virtue of being the only way to attempt to validate (and invalidate) causal

6.

Theda Skocpol, Social Revolutions in the Modern World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 304. 7. Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers, “The Use of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 22, No. 2 (April 1980), p. 181. 8. Ibid., p. 174. 9. Ibid., p. 182. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid.

6

Revolutions as Organizational Change

hypotheses about macro-phenomena of which there are intrinsically only limited numbers of cases.”12 According to James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, comparative-historical research investigates “big questions”—substantively important and large-scale outcomes—that take the form of puzzles about specific cases.13 In addressing these puzzles, scholars are primarily concerned with causal analysis, the examination of processes over time, and the use of systematic and contextual comparison. Mahoney also points out that comparative-historical research is “defined in part by the analysis of sequences of events that occur within cases.”14 This process analysis “facilitates causal inference when only a small number of cases are selected.”15 Specifically, process analysis allows “researchers to examine the specific mechanisms through which an independent variable exerts an effect on a dependent variable.”16 Under this approach, “the analyst starts with an observed association and then explores whether the association reflects causation by looking for mechanisms that link cause and effect in particular cases.”17 Therefore, a particular strength of comparative-historical research is its ability to identify and clarify the causal mechanisms that are crucial for theory building. In  Mahoney’s terms, “If analysts can point to specific linking mechanisms that connect cause and effect, they are in a much better position to assert that the relationship is causal.”18 The causal mechanisms identified by comparative-historical research allow a theoretically informed discussion of the generative processes that produce the association between the purported cause and effect. This comparative study of two peasant revolutions in southern China embodies the key tenets of macrocausal comparative-historical research, which looks at historical trajectories in order to understand social change. First, it tackles the so-called macrosocial topics that concern social changes. Revolutions are inherently “big questions” and constitute the focal points of the research of leading scholars in the macrocausal comparative-historical tradition, including Moore, Tilly, and Skocpol. Second, this study uses comparative history to make causal inferences and seeks to develop new causal generalization about peasant revolutions. To accomplish these goals, it specifies configurations favorable and unfavorable to the particular outcomes of radical peasant behaviors in Hunan and conservative peasant behaviors in Jiangxi. 12. Ibid., p. 193. 13. James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, “Comparative Historical Analysis: Achievements and Agendas,” in James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, eds., Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 3–38. 14. James Mahoney, “Comparative-Historical Methodology,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 30 (2004), p. 88. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., p. 89.

Introduction

7

In this case, the study focuses on the favorable and unfavorable impacts of alternative communal organizational forms in these two cases on the emergence of peasant revolutions. Consistent with Mahoney’s analysis of the key traits of comparative-historical research, this study of two peasant revolutions in southern China seeks to identify the causal mechanisms that are indispensable for theory building. Specifically, it analyzes how the internal organizational principles of agrarian communities affect peasants’ perceptions of the legitimacy of their communal social orders. The study examines how different origins of village cooperative institutions, such as large-scale population migrations and peasant rebellions, led to variations of communal organizational principles. This study argues that these institutional variations generate the causal mechanisms that led to different peasant behaviors in the revolutions in Hunan and Jiangxi. Specifically, this study argues that communal organizational principles influenced peasants’ perceptions of the legitimacy of communal social orders and shaped their revolutionary tendencies. Through detailed process analysis in later chapters, this comparative-historical research of two peasant revolutions relies on the above causal mechanisms to offer a theoretically informed discussion of the generative process that causally links communal organizational orders to peasant revolutionary behaviors. The result is that this study is able to build a new theoretical approach to the study of agrarian revolutions. As Skocpol and Somers argue, macrocausal comparative-historical research seeks to develop new causal generalizations in order to advance our understanding of social changes.

Cases and Sources The two peasant revolutions under study represent two important cases for advancing our understanding of agrarian revolutions. The Chinese revolution was a classic case of rural-based revolution, and these two particular cases were important components of that process. The Hunan revolution was the center of the so-called First Revolutionary Civil War from 1925 to 1927 when the Nationalists and the Communists formed a coalition to wage a nationalistic war against warlords then controlling China. The Jiangxi revolution was the center of the so-called Second Revolutionary Civil War from 1927 to 1935 when the Nationalists and the Communists battled each other for control of China. On one level, explaining the puzzle of the two revolutions will provide new insights into the great Chinese revolution of the twentieth century. On another level, its findings will advance an alternative approach to the comparative study of agrarian revolutions. The study of these two revolutions is now greatly facilitated by newly available research materials. With the limited liberalization of China during the 1980s, many

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CCP documents were declassified. In fact, the CCP in the last decade actively compiled and published several important multivolume collections of documents related to the two revolutions. One of them is Hunan lishi ziliao (Historical materials of Hunan), published between 1979 and 1981 by Hunan People’s Publishing House. It contains many primary records of the Hunan revolution including internal CCP documents, newspaper reports of the time, and materials of peasant associations. An  important multivolume publication on the Jiangxi era is Zhongyang geming genjudi shiliao xuanbian (Selected historical materials on the Central Revolutionary Base Area), published in 1982 by Jiangxi People’s Publishing House. This collection contains many important primary materials, such as CCP internal reports, letters, and policy guidelines. Another important collection is Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji (Selected documents of the Chinese Communist Party), published by the CCP Central Party School Press starting in 1989. This collection contains many previously classified CCP central documents. Of particular importance for this study are volumes 2 through 5, concerning the revolutions in Hunan and Jiangxi. These new sources provide fresh insight into the socioeconomic conditions and revolutionary processes in Hunan and Jiangxi. I make extensive use of these new sources in this book.

Structure of the Book Chapter 1 of the book presents the two peasant revolutions under study as a puzzle. I first build four criteria for measuring the intensity of peasant revolutions: the sources of revolutionary dynamics, the scope of peasant participation, the control of local-level revolutionary organizations, and revolutionary outcomes. I then briefly discuss the origins and backgrounds of the Hunan and Jiangxi peasant revolutions and systematically compare them using the four criteria to show that they present an interesting puzzle whose solution will extend our knowledge of agrarian revolutions. Chapter 2 makes use of historical and empirical materials from the two revolutions to demonstrate the limitations of existing theories of peasant revolutions in explaining the puzzle. These include the Marxist class exploitation thesis, moral economy theory, rational choice theory, and various kinds of structural theories. The general theoretical strengths and weaknesses of each approach are discussed. Chapter 3 advances an alternative organizational approach to the study of agrarian revolutions. It first discusses the role of formal organizations in agrarian communities. It then presents a comparative history of peasant communities with powerful cooperative organizations in different parts of the world, including Europe, Russia, and Japan. The next section examines how the different origins of community cooperative institutions—imposed cooperation by lords or external authority and voluntary cooperation by peasants of roughly equal resources—resulted in distinctively

Introduction

9

different communal organizational principles along four dimensions: organizational ideology, decision making and the source of elites, control mechanisms, and interest redistribution. The last section of the chapter hypothesizes about the relationship between communal organizational principles and peasants’ rebellious tendencies. Chapter 4 examines the organizational orders of Jiangxi rural communities. Community response to the environmental imperatives of a “frontier society” in a resource-poor region resulted in a distinctive, corporate lineage–centered communal organizational context. I analyze the institutions, functions, and internal structures of Jiangxi lineage organizations. Drawing on research by anthropologists and social historians, I discuss how strong corporate lineage institutions critically defined and mediated interclass relationships. Chapter 5 examines the organizational orders of Hunan rural communities. Community response to the social environment of peasant rebellions and state breakdown in the mid-nineteenth century led to the militarization of the communal organizational context through a widespread militia system. I describe the roles, functions, and structures of Hunan community militia organizations. The chapter also examines how community militia organizations in the late nineteenth century transformed themselves into an instrument of class rule by the landed elites and assumed a wide range of powers in the economic and political affairs of communities. Chapter 6 draws on the findings of the previous two chapters to explain the different peasant revolutionary patterns in Hunan and Jiangxi and the way these patterns were shaped by communal social structures. The rural organizational orders in Hunan and Jiangxi enjoyed different legitimacy among peasants. Differences in ideology, sources of elites and decision-making rules, control mechanisms, and interest redistribution resulted in different perceptions of the justice and fairness of communal social structures. I argue that agrarian revolutions can be caused by peasants’ attempts to restructure unjust communal organizational orders and establish new rules for community cooperation. This is what happened in Hunan. In communities with legitimate organizational orders, as in Jiangxi, it is difficult for agrarian revolutions to emerge, even with strong mobilization from outside revolutionary organizations. Finally, in Chapter 7 I elaborate an organizational theory of agrarian revolution and draw some broader theoretical implications for the study of peasant revolutions. These implications are fully consistent with the findings of recent comparative studies on revolutions. In general, these studies emphasize the role of nonmaterial factors in the making of revolutions. In particular, they suggest that declining legitimacy of the present political order is crucial in determining peasants’ tendencies toward revolution. Moreover, they tend to emphasize the constraining roles of pre-existing social structures of peasant communities and the way they affect the success or failure of outside revolutionary organizations.

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The chapter also reassesses the established interpretations of the Chinese revolution, which tend to emphasize the central importance of the CCP mobilization of the peasant population. These interpretations overlook the importance of pre-existing social structures of peasant communities and the way they facilitated or impeded the CCP mobilization efforts. The chapter argues that studies of the Chinese revolution must pay due attention to the role of pre-existing rural social structures to explain the varying outcomes of the CCP revolutionary strategies.

1 Contrasting Patterns of Two Agrarian Revolutions

The Chinese revolution of the twentieth century seems to be a representative case of the so-called Eastern type of revolution, which starts in the rural areas and is led by revolutionary organizations.1 Indeed, many studies have attributed the eventual success of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to its unique ability to mobilize the peasant population. As Kathleen Hartford and Steven M. Goldstein put it, this is the “organizational weapon” perspective of the Chinese Communist revolution.2 Chalmers Johnson argues that the CCP successfully championed anti-Japanese nationalism during the 1937–45 period and forged strong bonds with peasants alienated by the brutality of Japanese occupation.3 Mark Selden, by contrast, suggests that progressive socioeconomic reforms allowed the CCP to mobilize the peasants in its base areas.4 While the two studies emphasize different strategies that underlined the Communist success in rural areas, both view the CCP’s mobilization as the main driver of peasant revolutions in twentieth-century China. However, this perspective, which explains the CCP’s success in North China, cannot resolve a puzzle presented by two important peasant revolutions in South China between 1926 and 1934. In Hunan, although the CCP’s mobilization was largely absent, peasants staged a radical agrarian revolution. In Jiangxi, despite intense mobilization by the Communist Party, peasants demonstrated conservative tendencies and even opposed the party’s radical land reform policies. This puzzle therefore challenges the “organizational weapons” perspective that sees the CCP’s mobilization as the underlying cause of peasant revolutions in twentieth-century China.

1. 2.

3. 4.

Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968). Kathleen Hartford and Steven M. Goldstein, “Introduction: Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution,” in Kathleen Hartford and Steven M. Goldstein, eds., Single Sparks: China’s Rural Revolution (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1989), p. 9. Chalmers Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1937–1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962). Mark Selden, Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).

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Revolutions as Organizational Change

This chapter compares and contrasts peasant revolutions in Hunan and Jiangxi to demonstrate the limitations of established interpretations of the Chinese revolution. I argue that there are substantial differences in intensity among peasant revolutions. Peasant behaviors in some agrarian revolutions were more radical and violent than in other cases. We can measure and evaluate the intensity of peasant revolutions by following four criteria: The scope of peasant participation. This can be measured by peasants’ voluntary participation in various kinds of revolutionary organizations such as peasant associations and revolutionary armies. A revolution that attracts the spontaneous participation of a large proportion of a peasant society indicates stronger peasant revolutionary motives than one that involves only a small proportion of society. Sources of revolutionary dynamics. This measures whether a revolution emerges largely by itself from peasant communities or is created by external mobilization. An agrarian revolution that derives its dynamics internally while outside organizations play only a facilitative role indicates strong peasant incentives to wage a transformation of their own society. A revolution entirely mobilized by outside political forces reveals lukewarm peasant incentives to pursue socioeconomic and political changes. Local revolutionary leadership. This measures whether rural lower classes in a revolution have incentives to assume leadership in local revolutionary organs. Outside revolutionary organizations usually control high-level leadership positions in revolutions. Lower-level leadership, however, is crucial because it effectively determines the local direction of the revolutionary process. If rural upper classes control the local leadership, a revolution is unlikely to fundamentally restructure the existing socioeconomic and political order. Revolutionary outcomes. This measures whether a peasant revolution can fundamentally transform rural social, political, and economic structures. We should see whether a peasant revolution has comprehensive and radical political, social, and economic programs. Since the land problem always occupies a central place in peasants’ lives, a key measure is whether peasants seek to restructure the land relationship through a land revolution. Judged by these four criteria, the revolutions in Hunan and Jiangxi present us with a puzzle. Although CCP involvement in the Hunan peasant revolution was weak, peasants’ revolutionary behaviors were radical. In Jiangxi, however, even under intense mobilization by the CCP, peasants remained passive and conservative. In fact, they even opposed the CCP’s land reform policies. Given that these two provinces were very similar in many important social and economic aspects, explaining this puzzle would significantly advance our understanding of the causes of peasant revolutions.

Contrasting Patterns of Two Agrarian Revolutions

13

The Peasant Revolution in Hunan, 1926–1927 The Emergence of a Peasant Movement China was in a constant state of crisis after the 1911 revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty. The Republic that replaced the monarchy lacked institutions to effectively control the country. After the death of Yuan Shikai, the most powerful military strongman at the time, in 1916, China descended into a chaotic era of warlord politics. Warlords, supported by various foreign powers, constantly waged wars against each other. Each controlled anywhere from part of a province to several provinces.5 From 1920 to 1926 Hunan was ruled by the warlord Zhao Hengti. Like other warlords at the time, he constantly fought warlords from other provinces and his competitors within Hunan. The wars were ruinous for Hunan and created a chronic fiscal crisis for the military government, which in turn intensified its exploitation of the Hunan peasant economy. For example, the military government levied taxes seven to eight years ahead of the current year.6 The government also forced the purchase of military and government bonds in rural areas. Hunan peasants bore the brunt of this exploitative rule. In this context, the Hunan peasant movement began to emerge. The first organized peasant movement appeared in the Yuebei area of Hengshan County in 1923. Although the CCP was involved in the process, an internal party report claimed that peasants themselves played major roles in creating and expanding the Yuebei Peasant and Worker’s Association.7 According to this internal report, the organization began with only several hundred families. Within a month, by the time of the report in August 1923, around 6,000 families were registered with the organization, which had a total number of around 40,000. According to a report by Deng Zhongxia, then head of the CCP in Hunan, membership in the Yuebei Peasant and Worker’s Association was restricted to hired rural laborers, tenants, and small self-cultivators.8 Its social and economic programs were relatively modest. One involved distribution of rice to poor peasants. Another prohibited rice exportation to other provinces in order to keep the price low in the 5.

6. 7.

8.

For this warlord era in modern Chinese history, see Tang Suyan, “The Hunan-Hubei War and Its Consequences,” in Southwest Association of Warlord Studies, ed., Research on the History of Southwestern Warlords (Kunming: Yunnan renmin chubanshe, 1985). Meng Yuan, 1924, “The Deep Suffering Hunan,” Hunan lishi ziliao (HLZ), Vol. 1 (1979), pp. 86–88. Xiao Yun, 1923, “A Letter to Comrade Deng Zhongxia Concerning the Organization of the Hengshan Peasant Association and Peasant Movement,” HLZ, Vol. 1 (1979). This report was submitted by Xiao Yun, who was one of the CCP members involved in the Yuebei peasant movement, to Deng Zhongxia, the CCP party secretary of Hunan. Deng Zhongxia, 1924, “Another Discussion on the Peasant Movement in Hengshan,” HLZ, Vol. 1 (1979), p. 111.

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region. The association’s propaganda deliberately focused on nationalism rather than on socialism so that the military government would have no excuse to suppress the organization. However, the Hunan military government did not tolerate even these moderate programs of the Yuebei Peasant and Worker’s Association. According to Deng Zhongxia’s report, in November 1923 Zhao Hengti dispatched a battalion to the region, which killed sixty-seven peasants, arrested more than seventy others, and burned hundreds of peasants’ houses.9 The Yuebei peasant movement was ruthlessly put down by warlord armies. However, sporadic peasant movements kept emerging in Hunan. In 1925 Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong) personally organized several peasant associations in his hometown of Shaoshan in Xiangtan County. The programs of these peasant associations concerned rent reduction and control of rice prices. At the same time, Wang Xianzong, a CCP member, organized peasant movements in Zhuzhou County with programs similar to those of peasant associations in Shaoshan.10 These peasant movements were also quickly suppressed by Zhao Hengti. Mao fled to the neighboring province of Guangdong while Wang Xianzong was arrested and murdered by the warlord’s army. After these events the peasant movement in Hunan went underground. In early 1926, the CCP and left-wing members of the Kuomintang (KMT, also known as the Nationalist Party) secretly organized peasant associations in twelve counties in Hunan.11 But secret operations soon ended in March 1926 when Zhao Hengti was driven from Hunan by widespread social opposition and an attack by his former subordinate and a progressive officer, Tang Shengzhi. When Tang assumed the governorship of Hunan, he openly sympathized with peasants and workers’ movements. So  favored, peasant associations quickly expanded to another fifteen counties by the end of April. Nine of these twenty-seven counties also established county-level peasant associations.12 A Peasant Movement Transformed into a Revolution, 1926–1927 After July 1926 the peasant movement in Hunan entered a new stage. In May of that year, the progressive military man Tang Shengzhi came under attack from warlord Wu Peifu, who then controlled one of the largest warlord armies in China. Wu occupied territory in Central China along the Yangtze River, including neighboring Hubei 9. Ibid. 10. For these later efforts to organize the peasants of Hunan, see Chen Zhiling, A New History of the First Revolutionary Civil War (Xi’an: Shaanxi renmin chubanshe, 1981), pp. 205–22. 11. See Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Hunan Province, “Selected Historical Materials on the Peasant Movement of Hunan during the First Revolutionary Civil War,” HLZ, Vol. 1 (1980), p. 1. 12. For this political period, see Chen Zhiling, 1981, pp. 223–25.

Contrasting Patterns of Two Agrarian Revolutions

15

Province to the north of Hunan. He attacked Hunan because the revolutionary coalition of the CCP and KMT had already built a power base in Guangdong Province to the south of Hunan and had been actively preparing for a northern expedition to eliminate the warlords and to unify China again. Wu feared that under the rule of Tang Shengzhi, Hunan could be used as a springboard for the Guangdong revolutionary coalition. Thus, he launched a pre-emptive strike against Tang Shengzhi’s forces. Tang, forced to retreat into southern Hunan, requested military support from the revolutionary coalition in Guangdong and agreed to be under the command of the coalition. With this sudden change in the political situation, the Guangdong revolutionary coalition decided to launch its long-planned Northern Expedition immediately. Tang’s army was incorporated as the Eighth Army of the National Revolutionary Army, and Tang was named its commander. In July 1926 the National Revolutionary Army launched offensives against Wu Peifu’s forces in Hunan. Wu’s army was quickly defeated and the CCP-KMT coalition took the Hunan capital Changsha that month. The new Hunan government under the control of the CCP-KMT coalition created a vast political space for Hunan peasants who had long desired social and economic changes. The new CCP-KMT provincial government sponsored the creation of the Hunan Provincial Peasant Association to coordinate and guide peasant movements at the lower levels. The peasant movement spread like wildfire across Hunan. In July 1926 peasant associations in Hunan had a membership of about 200,000. By November, this figure had jumped to 1,350,000. By January 1927, peasant associations had been established in fifty-seven of the seventy-seven counties of Hunan, and they together claimed a membership of about 2 million.13 Table 1.1 illustrates the explosive expansion of the Hunan peasant movement. Although the social and economic programs of the early peasant associations from 1923 to 1925 were fairly limited, the Hunan peasant movement after July 1926 entered a qualitatively new stage. The movement transformed into a great peasant revolution that swept the countryside. Mao Tse-tung’s “An Investigation Report on the Peasant Movements in Hunan” is regarded as the most authoritative empirical study of this revolution. Mao did field Table 1.1 Membership of peasant associations in Hunan Time July 1926 November 1926 January 1927

Membership 200,000 1,350,000 2,000,000

Source: Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Hunan Province, 1980, p. 66. 13. For these data on the rapidly expanding membership of Hunan peasant associations, see Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Hunan Province, 1980, p. 66.

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research in the rural areas of Hunan for thirty-one days from January 4 to February 3, 1927. His report vividly describes a great revolution that destroyed the traditional social and political structures. With the fall of the landlord class, all power belonged to peasant associations. Mao found that organized peasants had eliminated feudal privileges that had existed for many centuries. According to Mao, the Hunan peasant revolution “truly achieved that all power belongs to peasant associations.” In villages, even family disputes had to be handled by peasant associations. As Mao observed, “Peasant associations truly rule with an iron hand” in the countryside. The local gentry and landlords “have been totally deprived of their right to have their say and no one dares to mutter the word no.”14 The landlord class was politically suppressed. As Mao wrote, “After peasants are organized, they first smash the political prestige and power of the landlord class.” Peasants began by publicly parading the landlords and bad gentry in tall paper hats. A heavier punishment was imprisonment in county jails. “The local bad gentry are sent to county jail to be locked up and county magistrates are asked to sentence them. . . . Formally it was the gentry who sent the peasants to jail, now it is the other way around.” Another punishment for the rural upper classes was banishment. “Peasants do not just want to banish the local bullies and bad gentry who were notorious for their crimes, but to arrest and kill them. Afraid of being arrested and killed, they run away. In the counties where the peasant movement is well developed almost all prominent local bullies and gentry have fled, and consequently are as good as banished.” The severest punishment was to shoot the most notorious landlords and bad gentry. In many counties, peasants organized “special courts for local bullies and bad gentry and shot the most notorious ones after trial.” Mao said that these executions were “very effective in eradicating the remaining evils of feudalism.”15 Peasants waged a wide range of economic struggles against the landlord class. Peasant associations in Hunan imposed bans on exporting grain from the area, on forcing up grain prices, on hoarding and speculation, and on increasing rents and rent deposits, as well as propaganda for reducing rents.16 On the surface these programs were fairly moderate. However, as we will see later in this chapter, these moderate economic programs were the result of conservative policies from outside revolutionary organizations. The CCP-KMT alliance prohibited a land revolution. As we will also see, peasants’ economic demands began to radicalize

14. These quotes are from Mao’s “An Investigation Report on the Peasant Movements in Hunan,” in Mao Tse-tung ji (Collected works of Mao Tse-tung), Vol. 1 (1972). For this part, see pages 209–10. 15. Ibid., pp. 226–69. 16. Ibid., p. 230.

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after Mao wrote his report in February 1927. In many counties, peasant associations broke the policy barrier and began to spontaneously organize land redistribution. The old rural governmental structures were overthrown. As Mao described, power at the du level (the administrative level below counties) used to be completely controlled by the landlord class. Each du had its own landlord militia and independent taxing and judicial powers. According to Mao, during the revolution “the power and prestige of the landlord class have been largely overthrown, and such organs of rural administration have naturally collapsed.” The chiefs of du referred all local matters to peasant associations and put people off with the remark, “It’s none of my business.” As Mao claimed, “The phrase ‘down and out’ certainly describes the fate of the old organs of rural administration in places over which the revolution has swept.” As for county-level administration, Mao found that “the magistrates in the counties I visited consulted peasant associations on everything. . . . If the peasant associations demand the arrest of a local bully in the morning, the magistrate dares not delay till noon.” He also found that in some counties everything was discussed by a joint council of magistrates and revolutionary mass organizations, such as peasant associations and workers’ unions.17 Old feudal institutions and norms were destroyed. Mao also reported how the old feudal institutions and norms were destroyed by the revolution. These included increasing women’s power, liberalizing sexual relationships, and banning gambling and even sumptuous feasts. Women in many places were encouraged to form their own women’s associations. Triangular love relationships among the young proliferated and were tolerated by the rest of the community. Mao found that whereas old administrative organs could not effectively ban gambling, gambling totally disappeared in places where peasant associations ruled.18 The Hunan Peasant Movement as Radical Rural Revolution Judging by Mao’s report, Hunan peasants waged a sweeping rural revolution that significantly transformed the old rural social and political structures. The revolutionary behaviors of Hunan peasants were radical as measured by the four criteria discussed at the beginning of this chapter. The scope of peasant participation. One criterion for measuring peasant participation is the proportion of the peasant population involved in a revolution. By this standard, the involvement of Hunan peasants in the revolutionary process was impressive. As mentioned previously, by January 1927 membership in peasant associations had reached 2 million. Historians suggest that the real number of peasants involved in the revolution could be around 10 million. The reason was that, as Mao recorded 17. Ibid., pp. 231–34. 18. Ibid., pp. 231–43.

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in his report, usually only the head of a family formally signed up as a member of a peasant association.19 According to a 1917 census by the Hunan provincial government, the Hunan population at the time was 31,088,024.20 Using this figure, almost one-third of Hunan’s population could have been involved in one way or another in the revolutionary process. According to Mao, in some middle-plain counties such as Xiangtan, Xiangxiang, and Hengshan, almost everyone was mobilized by peasant associations. In other middle-plain counties such as Yiyang and Huarong, most peasants were organized. Although many counties in hilly western Hunan were underorganized, the middleplain counties were the population and agricultural center of the province. Sources of revolutionary dynamics. A peasant revolution is radical if its dynamics are derived mainly from the peasant communities themselves while outside political forces only facilitate the process. This was exactly what happened in Hunan. Although outside revolutionary organizations facilitated the emergence of the Hunan peasant movement by creating a large political space, they were not directly responsible for the vast expansion of the peasant movement after 1926. Within the newly opened political space, the peasants themselves took the initiative to greatly expand the revolution. The CCP-KMT coalition at this time lacked the organizational infrastructures to penetrate into the vast countryside. The CCP itself was very young and small at the time, and its doctrine still lacked a strategic emphasis on the countryside and peasant movements. Many newly declassified CCP documents show the apprehension of CCP leaders over the lack of party control over the peasant revolution. For example, a central party directive in June 1927 on the strategies of peasant revolution stated: The most dangerous problem with the peasant associations is the absence of party leadership and guidance. . . . Party organizations at all levels lack good knowledge of the situation of struggles in their areas and the composition of peasant associations.21

A letter from the CCP center to the Hunan Provincial Party Committee revealed that up to June 1926, the CCP had sent to Hunan only thirty cadres professionally trained at the Institute of Peasant Movement directed by Mao Tse-tung in Guangdong.22 This was clearly insufficient to effectively lead the huge peasant revolution in Hunan. 19. For this practice of only the head of a family registering with peasant associations, see ibid., p. 209. For historians’ suggestion that up to 10 million peasants could have been involved in the revolution, see Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Hunan Province, “Selected Historical Materials,” p. 66. 20. For this Hunan population data in 1917, see Hunan Provincial Government, “Statistics on Land, Population, and Taxes of All the Counties of Hunan,” HLZ, Vol. 1 (1979), p. 82. 21. See CCP Party Center, 1927b, “No. 5 Central Party Directive: Strategies for the Peasant Movement,” Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji (ZZWX), Vol. 3, p. 161. 22. Quoted from CCP Party Center, 1926, “A Letter of Response from the Party Center to the Hunan District,” ZZWX, Vol. 2, p. 364.

Contrasting Patterns of Two Agrarian Revolutions

19

Those outside organizers who participated in peasant mobilization were usually poorly trained. They were primarily local progressive intellectuals and not professional revolutionaries. As one report on the peasant movement in Guiyang County in 1926 revealed: Over half are students coming back from Changsha and Hengzhou during the summer break, the rest are elementary school teachers. These organizers, except a general understanding of the importance of peasant movement, know absolutely nothing about the propaganda techniques, organizational procedures, recent political strategies, and the slogans of peasant associations.23

Thus, not only did the peasant movement lack leadership by outside political forces, the existing leadership was also incompetent. In another directive on July 20, 1927, the CCP center complained: Although in many places there are hundreds of thousands of peasants participating in the peasant revolution, in most cases there are only a few comrades involved with them. . . . Although there exist party organizations in some places, they either cannot infiltrate the masses (they all stop at the district level and not down to the xiang level), or they merely exist in name but cannot function.24 (Note: in Hunan xiang was the administrative level between districts and villages.)

The dynamics of the Hunan peasant revolution thus came mainly from peasants themselves. Outside political organizations played only a facilitative role by opening a large political space for the peasant movement to emerge and helped coordinate the movement at the provincial and county levels. They were also useful in giving the peasant revolution a national perspective by directing peasant struggles toward larger goals. However, peasants themselves were directly responsible for the great revolution in the countryside and the sweeping changes to the old rural orders. Local revolutionary leadership. Whether lower classes have the political consciousness to lead their own revolutions is crucial because each revolution is composed of countless local struggles that decide the outcome of the revolution. Fundamental changes can occur only when the lower level revolutionary process is radical. This was what happened in Hunan. According to Mao: In the countryside only one force has always put up the bitterest fight: the poor peasants. Throughout both the period of underground organization and that of open organization, the poor peasants have fought militantly. They are the deadliest enemies of the local bullies and bad gentry and attack their strongholds without the slightest hesitation.25

23. He Han, 1926, “A Report on the Peasant Movement in Guiyang County,” HLZ, Vol. 1 (1980), p. 128. 24. Quoted from CCP Party Center, 1927c, “No. 9 Central Party Directive: A General Strategy for the Current Peasant Movement,” ZZWX, Vol. 3, p. 221. 25. Mao, 1927, p. 218.

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Most importantly, this leading role by poor peasants was also reflected in their conscious efforts to control local revolutionary organizations. As Mao reported, “Being the most revolutionary, poor peasants have won the leadership in peasant associations. Almost all the posts of chairman and committee members in the peasant associations at the lowest level (the xiang level) were held by poor peasants.” Revolutionary outcomes. Whether a peasant revolution can fundamentally restructure the old rural political and economic orders is an important measure of its intensity. With regard to the political order in rural Hunan, Mao’s report and many other accounts depicted fundamental transformations. Peasant associations, in fact, established a political hegemony while the powers of the landed class and the old rural governmental structures were completely smashed. In the economic struggles, however, officially defined radical programs and activities did not appear. In many places it was largely confined to rent reduction. Does this imply that Hunan peasants were conservative in their revolutionary struggles? The answer is a clear no. The absence of more radical economic changes resulted from the conservative policies of outside revolutionary organizations. Both the KMT and the CCP were very conservative in their economic programs. The KMT officers were mostly drawn from lower- and mid-level landlord families, and many of the high-level KMT officers used to be warlords who joined the revolutionary camp because of personal calculations. Therefore, the KMT could not initiate or support truly revolutionary land policies. The CCP, politically very weak at the time compared with the KMT, adopted a policy of moderation of its policies in order to maintain a “united front.” As a result, until the end of 1926 both parties’ economic programs were very conservative. The resolution by the CCP on peasant movements in September 1926 merely limited rents to no more than 50% of production.26 The resolution by the KMT on peasant movements in October 1926 required a 25% rent reduction.27 Neither resolution mentioned the land issue. In early 1927, however, both parties were forced to take more radical positions on the land issue by the extremely rapid development of the Hunan peasant movement. The First Congress of Hunan Peasant Representatives in December 1926 demanded that the new government immediately implement a policy of “cultivator owns his land.” Faced with this pressure, a KMT resolution in March 1927 stated that the party “deeply understands that the most important demand of peasants is land. Without land, peasants will not support the revolution to its success. Thus the KMT

26. See “Nongmin yundong jueyi’an” (A resolution on peasant movement), in People’s Publishing House, 1953, Materials on the Peasant Movements during the First Revolutionary Civil War, p. 36. 27. For this KMT resolution, see ibid., p. 46.

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21

is determined to support peasants’ struggle for land until the problem is completely resolved.”28 However, this new KMT position was extremely vague, lacking specific policies and timetables to guide the peasants’ land struggle. The KMT and CCP still tried to avoid a land revolution. For example, a CCP central directive in June 1927 stated, “It is not time yet to propose the slogan of ‘Redistributing Lands.’ Party organizations at all levels must explain to peasant association leaders the danger of land redistribution.”29 These conservative economic programs sponsored by outside revolutionary organizations seriously hampered the Hunan peasants’ land struggle. Although the KMT and CCP lacked organizational infrastructure in rural areas, the larger policy parameters they set still effectively defined the limits of peasants’ action. Although the conservative policies of the KMT and CCP constrained peasants’ economic struggles, not all Hunan peasants refrained from restructuring the land relationship. After March 1927 in many places Hunan peasants, under the leadership of lower-level peasant associations, took the initiative to settle the land problem by confiscating and redistributing the property of the landlord class. They took the land revolution into their own hands even though higher-level revolutionary organizations were actively against a land revolution.30 These spontaneous actions were best recorded in the CCP’s internal documents. CCP leaders were alarmed because these actions threatened its alliance with the KMT. The Party Center asked its organizations at every level to stop the peasants’ spontaneous land revolution. As a central party directive of June 1, 1927, stated, “We must remember: our party’s peasant policy is to resolutely stop excess actions against small landlords and revolutionary military men.”31 Hunan peasants in some places had already confiscated the property of small landlords, which, unlike that of big landlords, was formally protected by the KMT and CCP. Peasants even confiscated the land of KMT officers. As a worried CCP report stated, “Peasants solving the land problem in an unorganized way have already caused countless excess actions. These

28. For this more radical KMT position, see ibid., pp. 47–48. 29. CCP Party Center, 1927b, pp. 157–58. 30. Zhi Xun, 1928, “A Recollection on the Hunan Peasant Revolution,” HLZ, Vol. 2 (1981), p. 159; Yang Qinwei, “The Party’s Land Policies during the First Revolutionary Civil War,” Xinjiang daxue xuebao, No. 2 (1985), pp. 59–60; Zhao Xiaomin, An Economic History of China’s Revolutionary Base Areas (Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 1983). 31. This central party directive was “Zhonggong ba-qi huiyi gao quanti dangyuan shu” (A call to all party members from the CCP August 7th conference), collected in People’s Publishing House, 1953, p. 61. After the July 1927 breakup of the CCP and KMT alliance, the CCP held an emergency meeting on August 7 to discuss new directions for the party’s political and military struggles. In the above document, the moderate land policies of the party were denounced as a main reason for the party’s failure to mobilize the peasants.

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excess actions must be corrected.”32 On May 25, 1927, a CCP resolution demanded that land confiscated from KMT officers’ families be returned immediately.33 Therefore, although the land policies of the KMT and CCP were conservative and opposed to a land revolution, Hunan peasants in many places took the land revolution into their own hands and broke the policy limits set by the KMT and CCP. The revolutionary actions of Hunan peasants clearly exceeded the policies of outside revolutionary organizations. In sum, by any criteria, the Hunan peasant revolution was a radical rural revolution. Hunan peasants seized the favorable political space created by outside political forces to generate a great social transformation. The tremendous scope of involvement and the radical social and political changes underlined this great rural revolution. The lower classes not only were the main force of the revolution but also actively led the revolutionary process at local levels. The actions of Hunan peasants (e.g., in the land revolution) often far exceeded what the CCP and KMT could allow.

The Peasant Revolution in Jiangxi, 1929–1934 The Jiangxi revolution was the center of the so-called Second Revolutionary Civil War, from the collapse of the CCP-KMT alliance in August 1927 until 1937 when the two parties formed a united national front in the face of the Japanese invasion. While the Jiangxi revolution lasted about five years, from 1929 to 1934, spatially it was restricted to the border region of southwestern Jiangxi and part of western Fujian. Since Jiangxi was then the center of the CCP-led revolutions and later the seat of the party’s central organs, the Jiangxi region was officially called the Central Revolutionary Base Area. Historical Background of the Jiangxi Revolution The origin of the Jiangxi revolution was related to the Hunan peasant revolution. The radical and violent revolutionary actions of Hunan peasants frightened KMT leaders who wanted a nationalistic, not a social, revolution. Many military coups by KMT forces took place between April and July 1927. The April 12 coup by Chiang Kaishek (Jiang Jieshi) in Shanghai killed thousands of CCP members and union workers under CCP leadership. The May 21 coup by KMT officer Xu Kexiang in the Hunan capital, Changsha, and the July 15 coup by the KMT in Wuhan also resulted in thousands of Communists being arrested and killed. In response to the KMT actions, the CCP organized a major military uprising of troops under its influence in Nanchang,

32. See ibid., p. 61. 33. CCP Party Center, 1927a, “Attitudes toward the Workers’ and Peasants’ Movement in Hunan,” ZZWX, Vol. 3, p. 136.

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23

the capital of Jiangxi, on August 1, 1927. This marks the beginning of the decade-long civil war between the KMT and the CCP. The CCP also organized rural uprisings in Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi Provinces to combat the KMT, which controlled the cities. In this context, rural revolutions emerged in southwestern Jiangxi and western Fujian. From October 1927 to January 1928, the CCP organized a series of rural uprisings in the southwestern Jiangxi counties of Jian, Wanan, Yongfeng, Ganxian, Yudu, Xunwu, and Xingguo. At about the same time, in western Fujian rural uprisings were organized in the counties of Pinghe, Longyan, Yongding, and Shanghang. These uprisings were all miniscule in scale and uncoordinated with each other. The result was a few tiny and semisecret revolutionary base areas in the two regions.34 These base areas proved conducive environments for the later great expansion of the Jiangxi revolution. They provided some necessary party infrastructure and cadres that could later serve as links between local peasant communities and Mao’s Red Army, which entered the region in early 1929. The Arrival of Mao’s Red Army and the Chinese Soviet Republic The arrival of Mao Tse-tung and his Red Fourth Army in early 1929 created a new era of rural revolution in Jiangxi. Mao’s Red Fourth Army originated with the Autumn Harvest Uprising that he organized in Hunan in September 1927. After his ragtag peasant forces were quickly defeated by KMT troops, Mao led his forces in retreat to the southern border region of Hunan and Jiangxi and established a base area on Jinggang Mountain. In April 1928, the remaining Communist forces from the Nanchang Uprising of August 1, 1927, came to Jinggang Mountain and merged with Mao’s peasant army. Together they formed the Red Fourth Army. Zhu De, a professional officer, became its commander and Mao Tse-tung its party representative. The best history of the period is recorded by Chen Yi’s detailed report to the CCP center on September 1, 1929. Chen Yi was then the No. 3 leader after Mao and Zhu in the Red Fourth Army.35 According to Chen Yi, it became apparent that the Jinggang Mountain base area was untenable for two reasons: the increasingly well-coordinated suppression campaigns by reactionary forces and the increasing logistical problems. The poor mountain areas of the base could not adequately support 10,000 troops. Food and clothing were scarce. By the end of 1928, Hunan reactionary forces were planning a new suppression campaign with twenty-four regiments. Facing these military and logistical threats, in January 1929 Mao and his comrades decided to abandon the Jinggang Mountain base area and redeploy the Red Fourth Army to the border region of southwestern Jiangxi and western Fujian. 34. See Dai Xiangqing, History of the Central Revolutionary Base Area (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1986), pp. 1–2. 35. Chen Yi, 1929, “Chen Yi’s Report on the History and Situation of Zhu-Mao Forces,” ZZWX, Vol. 5.

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Mao’s decision to move his Red Fourth Army to this region was due to his belief that it could provide his forces with an opportunity for military dominance. This was considered possible because of the unique political situation in China at the time. Although the Northern Expedition eliminated some warlords, many regions of China were still under the rule of various warlords, and the KMT central government could effectively control only a few coastal provinces around Shanghai. However, for historical reasons, the warlords’ military strength in each province was uneven. Jiangxi and Fujian warlords’ armies were very weak compared with the reactionary forces in other provinces and the ruling powers of these provinces were seriously divided. Mao  Tse-tung calculated that the CCP could thrive in southwestern Jiangxi and western Fujian and made it his new base area. Mao’s letter to the Party Center on April 5, 1929, explained his reasoning: We feel that among southern provinces Guangdong and Hunan both have strong landlord military forces. But it is quite another situation in Jiangxi, Zhejiang, and Fujian. These three provinces have the weakest military forces. Zhejiang has only a small provincial defense force belonging to Jiang Bocheng. Fujian has only fifteen regiments. But we have already defeated Guo Fengming’s brigade, and the forces belonging to Chen Guohui and Lu Xingbang are all bandit forces with little fighting capability. . . . In Jiangxi, there are sixteen regiments belonging to Zhu Peide and Xiong Shihui respectively. Although stronger than Fujian forces, they are still much weaker than Hunan forces. And most of these forces have fought with us, and we have defeated all but Li Wenbin’s brigade.36

Mao confidently concluded, “After we defeated Liu and Guo’s brigades, we can say there are no more enemies left in southern Jiangxi and western Fujian.”37 The weak antirevolutionary military forces in Jiangxi and Fujian were also deeply divided internally. Fujian was under the control of five small warlords fighting with each other. Thus, in July 1929 a resolution by the CCP Western Fujian Party Congress concluded that the collapse of Fujian’s ruling class was inevitable because their internal fighting created the ideal conditions for a revolution.38 In Jiangxi the internal power struggle within the antirevolutionary camp was even greater. The military commander of Jiangxi was Zhu Peide, an outside warlord originally from Yunnan Province. Jiangxi historically did not have its own provincial military, and Zhu’s rule as an outsider created many conflicts with the local elites. Also in Jiangxi was the Hunan army that had come to suppress the Red Army. In his report to the CCP Party Center in April 1930, Zhang Huaiwan explained that conflicts between the Yunnan army and local forces and conflicts between the 36. See Mao, 1929, “A Letter from the Front Committee of the Red Fourth Army to the Party Center,” ZZWX, Vol. 5, p. 676. 37. Ibid. 38. See the CCP Western Fujian Party Committee, 1929, “The Political Resolution of the First Congress of CCP Western Fujian,” ZZWX, Vol. 5, pp. 701–2.

Contrasting Patterns of Two Agrarian Revolutions

25

Yunnan army and the Hunan army were so frequent that there were many instances of open warfare among them. Zhang concluded that the Jiangxi regime was the most complicated in the country and was on the verge of total collapse.39 Besides the weak antirevolutionary forces in Jiangxi and Fujian, the central government under the KMT’s control was involved in wars with other warlords at the national level. In 1929, the KMT and warlords from Guangxi Province waged a major war. In 1930 there was another war between the KMT and a coalition of the warlords Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang. The latter was considered the biggest warlord war in modern Chinese history, with millions of troops involved.40 Thus, at least from 1929 to 1930, the formative years of the Jiangxi base area, the KMT itself was unable to organize serious military campaigns against the Red Army in southern Jiangxi and had to rely on weak provincial warlord forces to undertake poorly coordinated suppression campaigns. The arrival of Mao’s Red Army in the region created a new environment for local revolutions. In August 1930, Mao’s forces merged with another Red Army unit coming to the region, and together they established the Red First Front Army with Mao as the general commissar and Zhu De the commander. The Red First Front Army now had about 40,000 soldiers and successfully defeated three suppression campaigns by KMT forces from the end of 1930 to September 1931. Mao’s forces controlled a base area in southwestern Jiangxi and western Fujian that included twenty-one counties and a population of 2.5 million. In November 1931, Mao established the Chinese Soviet Republic. Mao was the chairman of its provisional government, and its capital was located at Ruijin County. A Conservative Peasant Revolution in Jiangxi Many studies of the Jiangxi period argue that the region under the Soviet Republic experienced a highly radical rural revolution. Ilpyong J. Kim’s The Politics of Chinese Communism: Kiangsi under the Soviets is the representative work with this interpretation. Kim argues that the CCP operated an effective political mobilization in the Jiangxi base area and aroused the class consciousness and a sense of participation on the part of peasants, who vigorously undertook a radical revolution.41 However, new sources show that peasants in southern Jiangxi profoundly frustrated the CCP. Although the CCP policies during the era, especially its land policies, were radical, the response from Jiangxi peasants was conservative and even uncooperative. The following analyses reveal the problems facing the CCP and the Red Army. 39. Zhang Huaiwan, 1930, “An Inspection Report by Zhang Huaiwan about Southwestern Jiangxi,” Zhongyang geming genjudi shiliao xuanbian (ZGGSX), Vol. 1, pp. 184–86. 40. For wars between the KMT and provincial warlords during this period, see Chen Zhiling, 1981. 41. See Ilpyong J. Kim, The Politics of Chinese Communism: Kiangsi under the Soviets (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 126, 201–5.

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Sources of revolutionary dynamics. In this regard, the Jiangxi revolution qualifies as a weak agrarian revolution. The dynamics of the Jiangxi revolution clearly came from outside political forces, primarily the Communist Red Army and the Leninist party-state machinery of the CCP. A letter from the Party Center to the Fujian Provincial Party Committee revealed that the revolution in western Fujian depended on the Red Army: In every struggle it is the Red Army that assumes the major role, rather than playing a facilitative force, behind the expansion of mass struggles after they already rose up. . . . We must let the masses realize that they themselves are the main force of the struggle. The Red Army is only military reinforcement. We must not let the masses develop the habit of relying on the Red Army.42

In Chen Yi’s report to the Party Center in September 1929, he discussed the important difference between two types of revolution, revolutions by the Red Army and by the masses: The difference between the revolutions by the Red Army and by the masses is that the Red Army’s revolution depends solely on its military strength to occupy an area and the masses become the subjects of Red Army’s rule because of their deference to the revolutionary authority. This type of revolution is unreliable. A revolution by the masses is due to the demands of the masses themselves. The masses arm themselves and rise up to evict their enemies. They run and dominate everything in their own areas. This type of revolution is impossible for the enemy to extinguish.43

Chen Yi went on to point out that Mao’s base area on Jinggang Mountain in 1928 was a Red Army–centered revolution. Although he was referring to Mao’s experience in 1928 in another region of Jiangxi, his differentiation between the two models of revolution was significant. A Red Army–centered revolution was an externally mobilized rural revolution. A mass revolution was an internally generated rural revolution. The Jiangxi revolution was a military revolution mobilized by the Red Army. A district party committee resolution summarized the nature of the Jiangxi revolution: Since the motivation of peasants’ and workers’ movements was due to their conquest by the Red Army, the masses do not believe in their own strength but are dependent on the Red Army. Thus the highs and lows of their revolutionary spirits are also dependent on the victories by the Red Army.44

42. CCP Party Center, 1929a, “An Instruction from the Party Center to the Fujian Provincial Party Committee,” ZZWX, Vol. 5, p. 25. 43. Chen Yi, 1929, p. 779. 44. This resolution was quoted in Cheng Shengchang, 1933, “Land Problem in the Communist Red Areas,” Guowen zhoubao, Vol. 10.

Contrasting Patterns of Two Agrarian Revolutions

27

As observed by another CCP report, local party organizations did not “change their opportunistic attitude of relying on the Red Army and waiting for the Red Army.” In southern Jiangxi “except in a few districts in Wantai, Xingguo, and Shengli Counties where it was the mass struggles and mass uprisings that created revolutions, in all other places it was the Red Army that created the revolution and established soviet areas.”45 The warlord phenomenon in China at the time allowed Mao and the Red Army to thrive in isolated and hilly southern Jiangxi. In fact, the Red Army dominated the region. Once the hegemonic position of the Red Army was established, the CCP and Chinese Soviet Republic, founded in November 1931, translated its Red Army–centered revolution into a political hegemony through the Leninist party-state machinery. A rural revolution was then mobilized through party-state structures. New CCP mobilization tactics were employed to integrate every single peasant into the revolutionary process. The Jiangxi peasants did not create the Chinese Soviet Republic. Rather, the hegemonic Red Army and the institutions of the Soviet Republic created a peasant revolutionary situation. Scope of peasant participation. The Jiangxi revolution was also conservative as judged by uncooperative peasant behaviors in the revolutionary process. While in the Hunan case we can measure the participation of peasants through their membership in voluntary revolutionary organizations, such as peasant associations, this measure is not appropriate for the Jiangxi case. The Leninist party-state machinery integrated every peasant into some party-state auxiliary organization. However, other reliable records of the reality of peasants’ voluntary participation in the revolutionary process exist. In Jiangxi the Red Army was the most crucial revolutionary institution and the revolution was dependent on its continuous expansion. The peasants’ participation in the revolution could be measured by their attitudes toward the Red Army. By this measure the revolutionary participation by Jiangxi peasants was dismal. Although the Red Fourth Army was fighting in the region to create a revolution, the participation of peasants from the region was nonetheless limited. Many of them were unwilling to join the revolutionary forces; even captured enemy soldiers who chose to stay in the Red Army numbered as many as Jiangxi and Fujian peasants. Table 1.2 details the composition of the Red Fourth Army according to Chen Yi’s report to the CCP center in 1929. Other materials also showed the great reluctance of Jiangxi and Fujian peasants to join the Red Army. A 1932 report by the Jiangxi Soviet Area Provincial Party Committee noted that in many places the CCP had to rely on coercion, deception, and bribes to recruit peasants. However, even these tactics did not help the party 45. See Jiangxi Soviet Area Provincial Party Committee, 1932, “A Work Summary by the CCP Jiangxi Soviet Area Provincial Party Committee,” ZGGSX, Vol. 1, p. 443.

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Table 1.2 Composition of the Red Fourth Army Background Soldiers from Nanchang Uprising troops Peasants from Hunan Autumn Harvest Uprising Captured enemy soldiers who chose to stay New recruits from Jiangxi and Fujian

Percentage 20% 40% 20% 20%

Source: Chen Yi, 1929, p. 769.

reach its targets for the expansion of the Red Army. As the report acknowledged, the expansion of the Red Army “had only been adequately implemented in six to seven counties including Xingguo, Ganxian, and Ruijin. In all other counties, especially those in western and southern Jiangxi, the results were very inadequate in the past three months. Therefore, the plan by the Provincial Party Committee to expand the Red Army by 12,000 men in three months only succeeded in reaching 7,000.”46 The report noted that “in Guangchang, coercion was used to recruit fifty people. The Third Corps relied on monetary and material incentives for recruitment.”47 The problem of low participation was not restricted to peasants. Even CCP members did not want to join the Red Army. As a 1932 Jiangxi party document stated: Party members’ unwillingness to join the Red Army, except in a few counties, became a general phenomenon. . . . It even happened that when party members in Wantai and Yundu Counties heard that they should take the lead in joining the Red Army, they would prefer to quit the party.48

The large number of desertions from the Red Army also demonstrates the low participation by Jiangxi peasants. A 1932 CCP summary of the expansion of the Red Army revealed that in Huichang County there were 300 deserters in July alone. In Changting County, only 2 of the 57 recruits reached the troops, with the rest deserting along the way.49 A CCP work guideline of Fujian Provincial Party Committee in October 1933 revealed that of a 1,000-man regiment recruited from Ninghua County only 200  stayed while a battalion from Sidu County had 200 deserters.50 Peasant desertions from the Red Army were so rampant that in many units deserters outnumbered new recruits. A work summary of the Third Corps mentioned that in one

46. 47. 48. 49.

Ibid., p. 434. Ibid. Ibid., p. 435. Yan Zhong, 1932, “A Summary of Lessons Learned from the Expansion of the Red Army in Three Months,” ZGGSX, Vol. 2, p. 665. 50. See CCP Fujian Provincial Party Committee, 1933, “A Work Report of the CCP Fujian Provincial Committee,” ZGGSX, Vol. 1, p. 505.

Contrasting Patterns of Two Agrarian Revolutions

29

month it had 76 new recruits while 83 deserted.51 To control the rampant desertions, the Red Army created the Antidesertion Ten Men Group in every company. Thus, almost 10% of a company’s manpower was spent policing the rest of the company. These special units had the right to arrest anyone who deserted or tried to desert.52 This evidence supports the argument that the participation by Jiangxi and Fujian peasants was far less active and spontaneous than that of Hunan peasants. Few peasants voluntarily joined the Red Army, the most important revolutionary institution at the time. Ilpyong J. Kim’s view that CCP mobilizations raised the political and class consciousness of Jiangxi peasants and thus caused their active participation in the revolutionary process needs to be re-evaluated. Local revolutionary leadership. For a long time local revolutionary leadership in Jiangxi was controlled either by the rural upper classes of landlords and rich peasants or by lumpenproletariat. Many documents show this widespread problem in the base regions of the Jiangxi revolution. In October 1930, Mao Tse-tung made a short investigation trip to Xingguo County, concentrating on the Yongfeng District of the county. Mao found that its district soviet was almost completely in the hands of rich peasants and lumpenproletariat. Of the eighteen members of the district soviet, there were six gamblers, one tailor, one doctor, one bankrupted big landlord, two rich peasants, one middle peasant, three intellectuals, and one woman of unknown background. Mao was struck that not a single poor peasant or agricultural laborer was included in this local revolutionary organ.53 This phenomenon, however, was not restricted to the Yongfeng District of Xingguo County. Tables 1.3 and 1.4 list the situation in Guangchang County and Le’an County. Many other sources show that this situation was widespread in southwestern Jiangxi and western Fujian. A report to the Party Center on the situation in southwestern Table 1.3 Leaders with an upper-class background in Guangchang County Position Chairman of County Soviet Party secretary of Xiaoshan District Chairman of Xinan District Soviet Chairman of Baishui District Soviet Chairman of Petou District Soviet

Class background Landlord Rich peasant Rich peasant Rich peasant Rich peasant

Source: Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee, 1933, pp. 695–96. 51. Huang Kecheng, 1933, “A Work Summary for the Previous Month by the Third Corps,” Huoguang, No. 1. Huoguang was a monthly newsletter published by the Third Corps of the Red Army. Huang was the commander of the corps. 52. See Yang Shangkun, 1933, “Guidelines for the Organization and Work of Antidesertion Ten Men Group,” ZGGSX, Vol. 2, pp. 690–92. 53. See Mao, 1930, “An Investigation of Xingguo County,” in Mao Tse-tung ji, Vol. 2.

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Table 1.4 Leaders with an upper-class background in the Le’an County Soviet Position Chairman of County Soviet Vice chairman of County Soviet Director of Land Department Director of Military Department Director of Inspection Department Director of Administrative Department

Class background Rich peasant Landlord Rich peasant Rich peasant Landlord Landlord

Source: Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee, 1933, pp. 695–96.

Jiangxi also complained that many local-level party leadership positions were in the hands of landlords and rich peasants. The report observed that an “antirevolutionary” phenomenon appeared in some local party organizations. Its author found that some party organizations opposed peasants’ revolutionary acts of refusing to pay landlords’ rents and loans (because these local leaders were themselves landlords) while other party organizations even tried to suspend the unions of poor agricultural laborers. Some also asked higher-level party organizations to “protect the properties of comrades,” meaning the properties of those landlords and rich peasants who controlled local party organizations.54 Another report to the Party Center in July 1930 noted that, during land redistribution, leaders of local organizations kept the best land to themselves while giving poor peasants bad land. “In conversations on the road with poor peasants who served as guides, nine out of ten expressed dissatisfaction with the government. However, they did not dare to speak out because they were controlled by landlords and rich peasants.”55 Rural upper-class control of local organizations seriously compromised the goals of the revolution. As one party document revealed: The land problem in southwestern Jiangxi has never achieved complete settlement in the past few years. . . . Generally speaking, landlord party members have been intentionally resisting the land revolution. For instance, their slogan of “Communist Party members’ land will not be redistributed” and their erasing of the word “landlord” from the slogan of “confiscating landlords’ and bad gentry’s lands” are good examples.56

A resolution by the Western Fujian Party Committee emphasized that purging rich peasants from local organizations was a precondition for deepening the rural revolution: “The party organizations in rural areas are full of rich peasants, especially 54. Zhang Huaiwan, 1930, p. 191. 55. See Liu Zuofu, 1930, “A Comprehensive Report by Comrade Liu Zuofu of Southwestern Jiangxi to the Party Center,” ZGGSX, Vol. 1, p. 242. 56. This document was “Gan xinan tewei tonggao di-jiu hao” (No. 9 notice by the Southwestern Jiangxi Special Party Committee). It was quoted in Cheng Shengchang, 1933.

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31

in leadership organizations.  .  .  . The slow pace of revolutionary struggle in many places is due to the activities of these men. They stop instructions from high party leadership organizations from reaching the masses.”57 While in Hunan poor peasants dominated the leadership of local revolutionary organs, in Jiangxi poor peasants were politically inactive. This seriously twisted the goals of the CCP and diluted the radicalness of the revolution. The CCP had to implement large-scale campaigns against rich peasants to promote the leadership of poor peasants in local revolutionary organizations. Revolutionary outcomes. Even though the revolution in Jiangxi was created and mobilized by the CCP, which implemented radical policies, the outcomes nevertheless were disappointing. This was demonstrated by the failure of the Communist land revolution. The land revolution started in the region in 1930 shortly after Mao established the base area. The rapid implementation of a radical land program was intended to raise the class consciousness of the peasants and their support of the revolution. However, by 1933 the CCP found that its land revolution in Jiangxi was, in fact, a failure. The failure of land distribution was discovered in an isolated incident. In April 1932 a CCP cadre named Zhu Kaishuan was appointed chairman of the soviet of the Yunji District of Ruijin County. Ruijin was the capital of the Chinese Soviet Republic, and the Yunji District was the seat of the party and the state, and it was the Red Army headquarters. However, Zhu found that even in this district the land problem had not yet been solved. As described in his memoir, he found that although landlords and rich peasants were the targets of land redistribution in 1930 and 1931, many of them, in fact, got better land while poor peasants got land of poor quality. Zhu Kaishuan wrote to Mao Tse-tung in February 1933 to report the problem. Mao personally went to the Yunji District to investigate and asked the district to organize a special task force for a formal investigation. The outcome was astonishing. For example, in Yeping xiang (xiang was the administrative level between districts and villages) twenty-eight additional landlords and rich peasants were uncovered. During the land revolution this xiang was known to have only four landlords and rich peasants. In the whole district ninety-three additional landlords and twenty-three additional rich peasants were uncovered. A total of 250 mu of land was confiscated and redistributed.58 Mao learned from this case that the land revolution was far from complete. If the land revolution could be a failure at the heart of the party-state center, it could only be worse in other areas. As a result, the CCP launched the Land Investigation Campaign to solve the problem in June 1933. 57. CCP Western Fujian Party Committee, 1930, “The Rich Peasant Issue: A Resolution by the Western Fujian Special Party Committee),” ZGGSX, Vol. 3, pp. 413–14. 58. For a more detailed discussion of the origins of the Land Investigation Campaign, see Zhu Kaishuan, 1982, “Comrade Mao Tse-tung Led Us Carrying Out the Land Investigation Campaign,” in Geming huiyilu (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe), Vol. 5.

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In “An Order by the Central Government Regarding the Land Investigation Campaign,” the party acknowledged the failure of land revolution in southwestern Jiangxi and western Fujian: In every soviet region and particularly the Central Soviet region, there are still large areas where the land problem has not yet been solved. These areas constitute almost 80% of the Central Soviet Area and affect more than 2 million peasants. They include the entire counties of Ruijin (except the Wuyang District), Huichang, Xunwu, Anyuan, Xinfeng, Yundu (except the Xinpo District), Le’an, Yihuang, Guangchang, Shicheng, Jianning, Lichuan, Ninghua, Changting, Wuping, and most parts of counties like Fusheng, Shengli, Yongfeng, and parts of counties like Gonglue, Wantai, Shanghang, Yongting, and Xinquan.59

The Land Investigation Campaign within weeks swept the entire base area in southern Jiangxi and western Fujian and lasted roughly until the end of 1933. It became the central work of party-state organizations at all levels. Every issue of the government newspaper Hongse Zhonghua (Red China) during the period was full of reports of this new round of land revolution. In the end, a large number of landlords and rich peasants were exposed and their land confiscated. In many counties the number of newly uncovered landlords far outnumbered those uncovered in the previous land revolutions. Thus, the CCP-organized land revolution in Jiangxi can be judged as a failure. This forced the party, several years later, to launch essentially a new round of land revolution. As Yuan I concludes, “The agrarian policy of the Rural Soviet in the 1930s created bitter resentment among southern Chinese peasants toward the CCP.”60 The conservative behavior of Jiangxi peasants on the land issue was in sharp contrast to that of the Hunan peasants. The CCP’s land policy in Hunan was to prevent a peasant land revolution. Peasants in many places, however, broke this policy barrier and took the land revolution into their own hands by confiscating and distributing the land of the rural upper classes. In sum, peasant behaviors in the revolution in Jiangxi were conservative according to the four criteria. The revolutionary situation was created by the military and political hegemony of the CCP and its Red Army. Peasants’ response to the top-down revolution of the CCP was passive. A strong party-state presence and an extensive political mobilization system did not foster widespread peasant participation in the revolutionary process. Moreover, local revolutionary organs were typically controlled by rich peasants, even landlords. The radical land revolution promoted by the CCP was in fact resisted by the peasants. 59. See the Chinese Soviet Republic, 1933a, “An Order by the Central Government Regarding the Land Investigation Campaign.” This order, issued by Mao, is selected in ZGGSX, Vol. 3. For the quotation, see page 477. 60. Yuan I, “Reinventing Mao’s Peasant Revolution Theory: Agrarian Structure and Peasant Power in Pre-1949 South China,” Issues & Studies, Vol. 33, No. 7 (1997), p. 6.

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Summary Peasant revolutions in Hunan and Jiangxi therefore stand in sharp contrast to each other. While peasant revolutionary behaviors in Hunan were spontaneous and radical, peasants in Jiangxi remained politically inactive and conservative even under the intense mobilization by the CCP. This presents a puzzle because these two revolutions took place in two neighboring provinces and the degree of CCP involvement should have produced the opposite revolutionary patterns. According to Waterbury, by analyzing the “reactionary, or at best neutral, role” of some peasants in comparison to “the fervent revolutionary role” of others, “we might be able to better understand the conditions under which peasants will or will not make the revolution.”61 Explaining what made Jiangxi peasants nonrevolutionary is therefore as important as explaining what made Hunan peasants revolutionary.

61. Ronald Waterbury, 1975, “Non-revolutionary Peasants: Oaxaca Compared to Morelos in the Mexican Revolution,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 17, No. 4, p. 411.

2 Contending Theories of Agrarian Revolution

Chapter 1 reveals an interesting puzzle to be resolved. While the CCP had little presence in Hunan, peasants nonetheless staged a spontaneous and radial agrarian revolution. In Jiangxi, although the CCP directly created a revolutionary situation, peasants there remained passive and conservative. This chapter examines the relevance of existing theories of agrarian revolutions in explaining this puzzle. Specifically, it reviews four distinct theoretical approaches to the study of agrarian revolution. The analytical tradition with the longest history is the Marxist class exploitation thesis. However, this chapter shows that it fails as a robust theory of peasant revolutions. Second is the moral economy approach that attributes the cause of peasant rebellions to the collapse of traditional ethnic systems due to intrusion by capitalism and imperialism. Third is the rational choice theory that attributes peasant revolutions to individual peasants’ rational decision making. The fourth approach focuses on the structural properties of peasant societies. This approach further divides into theories that focus on power structures in peasant communities and theories that focus on the structures of economic relationships.

The Marxist Class Exploitation Thesis An often-cited explanation of peasant revolutions is the Marxist class exploitation thesis that poverty and exploitation breed peasant revolutions.1 The thesis holds that peasants rebelled because they were heavily exploited by the upper classes backed by the repressive state. According to this logic, we should find peasant revolutions everyday and everywhere. However, few peasant revolutions have occurred in history even though class exploitation has been common. This weakness of the Marxist class exploitation explanation is evident in its inability to explain the puzzle of the two cases. The following tables about the levels of poverty and exploitation in Hunan, Jiangxi, and western Fujian make this clear. Table 2.1 classifies Hunan and Jiangxi’s peasant populations according to their economic means. 1.

For a general analysis of the Marxist class exploitation thesis, see Michael Mann, Consciousness and Action in the Western Working Class (London: Macmillan, 1973).

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Table 2.1 Peasant composition in Hunan and Jiangxi Years Jiangxi Hunan

Counties surveyed 1911 1931 22 23 29 31

Tenants % 1911 1931 41 46 48 47

Owner-tenants % Owner-cultivators % 1911 1931 1911 1931 30 30 29 24 23 25 29 28

Source: Statistics Bureau, 1940, pp. 6–7. Table 2.2 Peasant composition in Fujian Years 1911 1931

Tenants % 40 41

Owner-tenants % 30 33

Owner-cultivators % 29 27

Source: Zheng Xingliang, 1977, pp. 320–57.

Table 2.2 provides a classification for Fujian peasants. They were classified by whether they rented all their lands (tenants), owned some land but still had to rent others’ lands to survive (owner-tenants), or made a sufficient living from their own lands (owner-cultivators). We can see that both Hunan and Jiangxi, as well as Fujian, had an overwhelming portion of poor peasants who either were completely landless or had to rent some land for survival. Strikingly, in each of these areas tenants and owner-tenants together made up about 70% of the peasant population. Therefore, the Marxist class exploitation thesis that poverty caused peasant revolution does not explain the differences in peasant behaviors in the revolutions in Hunan and Jiangxi. The following tables compare the rent rates in these three provinces to determine their relative level of exploitation. In Table 2.3 the data for Hunan is from three eastern counties, the most violent area during the Hunan revolution. The data for Jiangxi is from three southern counties that constituted the core of the Chinese Soviet Republic. Table 2.3 Comparison of rent rates in Hunan and Jiangxi Hunan Counties Liuyang Pingjiang Liling

Jiangxi Rent rates 60% 54% 55%

Counties Guangchang Shicheng Ningdu

Rent rates 50% 60% 63%

Source: Wang Hao, 1935, pp. 13–17.

Table 2.4 examines exploitation in Jiangxi. The table is based on a survey of rent rates in fifty-five counties in Jiangxi and lists rent rates in southern counties that constituted the Jiangxi Soviet Republic:

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Table 2.4 Rent rates in southern Jiangxi Counties Lichuan Xinfeng Shicheng Anyuan Guangchang

Rent rates 55% 40% 50% 60% 50%

Counties Xingguo Yudu Ruijin Huichang Ningdu

Rent rates 55% 50% 50% 55% 70%

Source: Sun Zhaoqian, 1977, pp. 45203–4.

The data for rent rates in three western Fujian counties during the 1930s is listed in Table 2.5. Table 2.5 Rent rates in western Fujian Counties

Wuping

Changting

Liancheng

Rent rates

57%

50%

40%–60%

Source: China Year Book 1934, quoted in Li Guopu, 1986, p. 19.

As these tables indicate, the levels of exploitation in the core regions of the Hunan and Jiangxi revolutions were similarly high; rent rates of 50%–60% were standard. Therefore, heavy exploitation cannot explain the differences in the peasants’ behaviors in the two revolutions. Although the peasants in southern Jiangxi and western Fujian suffered a high level of exploitation almost identical to the situation in Hunan, this did not raise their revolutionary potentials.

The Moral Economy Approach Well-known studies using this influential analytical approach include Eric Wolf ’s Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, Joel Migdal’s Peasants, Politics, and Revolutions, and James Scott’s The Moral Economy of the Peasant. The moral economy perspective of peasant revolutions argues that imperialism and capitalism destroyed the old ethic systems of traditional peasant societies, causing a moral reaction from peasants. The approach is perhaps best summed up by British sociologist Eric Hobsbawn: “The best explanation is that the rise of social revolutions was the consequence of the introduction of the capitalist legal and social relationship. . . . It is hardly necessary to analyze the inevitable cataclysmic consequences of so unprecedented an economic revolution on the peasantry. The rise of social revolutionism followed naturally.”2 Wolf, Scott, and Migdal offer more detailed analyses that connect the rise of rural revolutions to the intrusion of capitalism, markets, and commercialization. Wolf 2.

Eric Hobsbawn, Primitive Rebels (New York: Norton, 1965), p. 80.

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attributes the disruption of precapitalist societies to “a great overriding cultural phenomenon, the world-wide spread and diffusion of a particular cultural system, that of North Atlantic capitalism.”3 According to Wolf, before the advent of capitalism and the new economic order based on it, social equilibrium depended in both the long and short run on a balance of transfer of peasants surpluses to the rulers and the provision of a minimal security for the cultivator. Sharing resources within communal organizations and reliance on ties with powerful patrons were recurrent ways in which peasants strove to reduce risks and to improve their stability, and both were condoned and frequently supported by the state.4

These mechanisms, Wolf argues, collapsed with the intrusion of capitalism: “the spread of capitalism resulted in the redistribution of land and human labor as commodities for sale and cut through the integument of custom, severing people from their accustomed social matrix in order to transform them into economic actors, independent of prior social commitments to kin and neighbors.”5 Joel Migdal’s explanation of rural revolutionary movements employs a similar logic. He argues that the peasantry in the twentieth century experienced a disruptive economic transition from a predominantly “inward orientation” characterized by subsistence agriculture, strong communal support, and patronage relations to an increasingly “outward orientation” characterized by greater peasant involvement with and dependence on “multiplier mechanisms: markets, cash, and wage labour.”6 These forces have “weakened the personalistic bonds between lord and peasants, and they have undermined the stability of peasants’ incomes and expenditures, causing household economic crises.” As Migdal thus claims, “Certainly, capitalism has been in the forefront in introducing disequiliberating changes.”7 Why did disruptive capitalism and markets cause rural revolt? This is best explained by what Scott calls the “moral economy” of the peasant. Scott defines peasants’ moral economy as “their notion of economic justice and their working definition of exploitation . . . their view of which claims on their product were tolerable and which intolerable.”8 He further claims that a “subsistence ethic” constituted the main component of the moral economy of precapitalist peasant society. Simply put, this means that each peasant family should have guaranteed, if meager, resources sufficient to keep the family alive and performing necessary social and productive functions. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Eric Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 276. Ibid., p. 279. Ibid. Joel S. Migdal, Peasants, Politics and Revolutions: Pressures Toward Political and Social Change in the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 87. Ibid., p. 258. James Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasants: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976), p. 3.

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According to Scott, precapitalist peasant society had a variety of arrangements to achieve this “subsistence ethic.” A technical arrangement involving seed varieties, planting techniques, and timing was designed over centuries of trial and error to produce the most stable and reliable yield. However, for the peasantry to iron out “the ripples that might drown a man,” a social arrangement was even more important: “patterns of reciprocity, forced generosity, communal land, and worksharing helped to even out the inevitable troughs in a family’s resources which might otherwise have thrown them below subsistence.”9 Most importantly according to Scott, although the desire for subsistence security grew out of the needs of peasant economies, it was also socially experienced as a pattern of moral rights and expectations and constituted the fundamental social rights of peasants. As he points out, “If we understand the indignation and rage which prompted them to risk everything, we can grasp what I have chosen to call their moral economy: their notion of economic justice and their working definition of exploitation.”10 As Barrington Moore further notes: This experience (of sharing risks within the community) provides the soil out of which grow peasants’ mores and the moral standards by which they judge their own behavior and that of others. The essence of these standards is a crude notion of equality, stressing the justice and necessity of a minimum of land (resources) for the performance of essential social tasks. These standards usually have some sort of religious sanction, and it is likely to be in their stress on these points that the religion of peasants differs from that of other social classes.11

Thus, the subsistence ethic is a peasant’s moral principle and moral right, and its violation could incite peasants’ resistance. Two forces led to violations of this moral right: the imposition of capitalism and the development of the modern state under colonialism. The first disrupted the subsistence ethic by transforming land and labor into commodities for sale, while the second did so by imposing a market economy and by laying new claims on peasant income through taxes. According to Scott, peasant revolts were actions in defense of the subsistence ethic.12 These works in one way or another stress the large external historical forces of imperialistic capitalism and the commercialization and markets associated with it as the fundamental causes of peasant revolutions. However, as Theda Skocpol asks, “Does capitalist imperialism cause peasant based revolutions?”13

9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. See Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965), pp. 497–98. 12. Scott, 1976, p. 10. 13. Theda Skocpol, “What Makes Peasants Revolutionary?”, Comparative Politics, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1982), p. 367.

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The moral economy theory assumes that a large historical process in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suddenly disrupted otherwise closed traditional peasant societies and destroyed their communal value systems, causing peasant rebellions. However, if such a disruptive historical process was confined to only some parts of the world, then the theory has only limited applicability. As critics point out, the moral economy approach adopts an idealized interpretation of precapitalist societies. It is claimed that these societies were based on selfsufficient economies with little or no market element. Only the sudden intrusion of capitalism brought these villages into contact with cash and markets. According to Wolf, market production occurs only when a peasant is unable to meet his cultural needs within local institutions. He sells a cash crop only because he needs money to “buy goods and services which he requires to subsist and to maintain his social status rather than to enlarge his scale of operations.”14 Scott argues that among peasants “the ethos that promoted mutual assistance was partly inspired by a rejection of the market economy. Considering the circumstances and the rigors of commercial agriculture, it is little wonder that many peasants, if given the option, move substantially away from production for the market.”15 However, the assumption that all precapitalist rural societies were closed economies with little market involvement and commercialization is not empirically supported. Markets and commercialization had long played important roles in many precapitalist rural societies. As Kurtz points out, “And with the passage of time, fewer and fewer peasantries may meet the demands of Scott’s moral economy definition.”16 Skocpol argues that even if we accept “the prime causal role (if not the exact forms and effects) of capitalist commercialization, there is still room to doubt whether such commercialization is a necessary cause, or even an essential concomitant of peasantbased revolution.”17 She points out that “Chinese agriculture was not on the whole any more commercialized in the first half of the twentieth century than it had been for centuries before.”18 Thus, the moral economy theory has limited empirical applicability, not suitable for analyzing precapitalist societies that had already seen extensive commercialization of economic activities. Indeed, William G. Skinner’s influential studies of rural marketing in the traditional Chinese economy show that markets played a very important role. The basic structure of traditional Chinese society was, essentially, cellular. The nucleus of each cell was one of about 45,000 market towns (as of the 14. Eric Wolf, “Closed Corporate Peasant Communities in Mesoamerica and Central Java,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 13, No. 1 (1957), p. 454. 15. James Scott, “Peasant Revolution: A Dismal Science,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1977), p. 254. 16. Marcus Kurtz, “Understanding Peasant Revolution: From Concept to Theory and Case,” Theory & Society, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2000), p. 106. 17. Skocpol, 1982, p. 370. 18. Ibid., p. 371.

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mid-nineteenth century). The body of the cell was the area immediately dependent on the town, typically including fifteen to twenty-five villages. As Skinner argues, Chinese peasants were members of two communities, their village and the marketing system to which their village belonged. Although the base-level market towns played important roles in peasants’ lives, they were also linked to higher-level marketing systems through the hierarchy of intermediate market towns, central market towns, local cities, and regional cities.19 Ramon Myers’s research shows that, especially from the mid-nineteenth century with the development in productivity and transportation, peasant economies in China became even more dependent on markets.20 John L. Buck’s large-scale survey from 1921 to 1925 confirmed this. The survey found that in family farms in North and East-Central China, average farm receipts exceeded 50% of total farm earnings, whether a family rented, owned part and rented part, or owned all of the land it cultivated.21 Dwight Perkins, while challenging Buck’s survey results because part of his survey was in areas near commercial centers, nonetheless agrees that Chinese peasants’ income in cash still fell somewhere between 30% and 40%.22 Farm receipts are the income earned in cash from exchanging outputs of the farm in the markets, and farm earnings are farm receipts plus the value of products and services produced and consumed on the farm valued at market prices. The percentage of farm receipts in farm earnings is widely used as an index of the commercialization of peasant economies. By the 1920s and 1930s when many peasant revolutions emerged in China, the rural economy of China had already been significantly commercialized. Aside from their general role in the Chinese rural economy, markets had long played important roles in the rural economies of Jiangxi and Hunan Provinces. Jiangxi traditionally had a very active market element in its rural economy because of its rich agricultural resources and cash crops. It had been one of the most important rice production and export provinces in China. Because the province was relatively sparsely populated and because its climate permitted two crops of rice in a year, a large portion of Jiangxi’s grain production was prepared for the national market. During the Tang dynasty grain exports from the South of China to the North were around 6 million piculs a year, with about a quarter of that from Jiangxi.23 During the Song dynasty, Jiangxi provided about one-third of total exports of rice from

19. For Skinner’s influential discussion, see his “Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1 (1964), pp. 2–43. 20. Ramon Myers, The Chinese Peasant Economy: Agricultural Development in Hopei and Shantung (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 173. 21. John Buck, Land Utilization in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937), pp. 65–80. 22. Dwight Perkins, Agricultural Development in China, 1368–1968 (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), p. 114. 23. For the history of grain export by Jiangxi, see Xu Huailin, “The Shipping Industry in Jiangxi’s History,” Jiangxi shifan daxue xuebao, No. 1 (1988), p. 17.

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South China to the North.24 During the Qing dynasty, as the Jiangxi population and its manpower quickly increased, its grain production also increased, and the province assumed a major role in feeding the rest of the country. One study estimates that Jiangxi was then exporting around 10 million piculs of grain a year.25 Therefore, a large portion of the Jiangxi agricultural production had long been market related and commercialized. The Jiangxi rural economy had also long been market dependent because of its large exports of cash crops. Many parts of Jiangxi, particularly in the South, were hilly and unsuitable for grain production. Many kinds of cash crops were raised for export. Tea, indigo, ramie, hemp, tobacco, and cotton were the main products in many southern counties in Jiangxi. Cloth, paper, and timber products were also important sources of income for Jiangxi’s rural economy. Tea production in Jiangxi was particularly important in the national market, since its production had long been the highest in the country. Chen Zhiping found that tea production in Jiangxi in AD 1162 during the Song dynasty was already 3.4 million kilograms, about 30% of the national total.26 Many sources have recorded the importance of the export of cash products to the Jiangxi economy. According to H. B. Morse, who served in the statistics division of the Chinese Customs, fully two-thirds of the values of Jiangxi exports were from cash products: Table 2.6 Major exports of Jiangxi in 1904 Products Tea Cotton Hemp Paper Tobacco Subtotal Total export

Value (in Tls) 4,945,000 502,300 926,000 1,443,000 645,000 8,511,300 12,302,165

Source: Morse, 1921, p. 258.

As a result of the highly commercialized agricultural economy in Jiangxi, its peasants had long been closely related to the markets. Wang Genquan’s research on market towns in the Fuzhou region of Jiangxi during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries shows that by this time in Jiangxi there was already a high density of market towns, similar to what William Skinner claims in his study. He found that in the five 24. See Wu Xuxia, “The Development of the Commercial Agricultural Economy in Jiangxi during the Song Dynasty,” Jiangxi shehui kexue, No. 6 (1990), p. 94. 25. This figure was quoted from Chen Zhiling, “Residues of Serf Practices in Fujian during Qing,” Zhongguo shehui jingji shi yanjiu, No. 2 (1987), p. 116. 26. Ibid., p. 117.

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counties in the region there were 102 market towns. The average distance between market towns was only eight miles.27 Xu Xiaowang’s research on commercial agricultural production in Jiangxi from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century shows that the density of market towns in Jiangxi by this time had significantly increased. As he observes, the different timing of each market and the location of each market town were carefully chosen “so that every peasant could have some relationship with the market.” He further observes, “These market towns were the products of commercialized agricultural production. . . . [T]hey were built on conscious commercial production” and during the Qing dynasty “were already widespread in the rural regions of Jiangxi and became a constant historical phenomenon.”28 Hunan, along with Jiangxi, was also one of the most important rice production and export provinces in China. Morse estimates that annual rice exports by Hunan around the turn of the twentieth century were around 10 million piculs, about the same as rice exports by Jiangxi.29 Another study suggests that in the late nineteenth century Hunan may have had a yearly surplus of 30 million piculs of rice.30 No matter which is the correct figure, the old Chinese proverb of “when Hunan has a good harvest, the universe is fed” describes the importance of Hunan rice to the country. This part of Hunan agriculture had long been related to the national markets. For instance, in the early nineteenth century the city of Xiangtan emerged as one of the most important commercial centers along the Yangtze River because of its role as a busy grain export center.31 Hunan resembled Jiangxi in that it also had a large cash crop economy. The province’s southern and western parts are also hilly areas suitable for cash crops. Tea, tobacco, cotton, and ramie were important income sources.32 Cotton production yield by Hunan was among the highest in China. By the Qing dynasty, the rural economy in Hunan had already been significantly commercialized. Chen Xiping found that due to the rapid development of interregional trade relationships within the province, a single integrated market gradually evolved. For example, in the Wugang region of the province, 40% of the agricultural

27. Wang Genquan, “A Typical Market Town during Ming and Qing: The Market Town of Wuzhou, Jiangxi,” Jiangxi daxue xuebao, No. 2 (1990), p. 76. 28. Xu Xiaowang, “The Development of the Commercial Agricultural Economy in Jiangxi during the Qing Dynasty,” Zhongguo shehui jingji shi yanjiu, No. 4 (1990), p. 33. 29. See H. B. Morse, The Trade and Administration of China (London: Oxford University Press, 1921), p. 334. 30. Zhang Yuanpeng, A Study on Regional Modernization in China: Hunan Province, 1860–1916 (Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1983), p. 26. 31. Peter C. Perdue, Exhausting the Earth: State and Peasants in Hunan, 1500–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 167–69. 32. Zhang Yuanpeng, 1983, pp. 30–31; Perdue, 1987, p. 169.

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products were exported to the rest of the province while 40.9% of the products in local markets were imported from other regions.33 In sum, the precapitalist rural economies of Jiangxi and Hunan had long had an important and active market element. A significant portion of their rural production had been commercialized. As a result, the moral economy perspective cannot explain the differences between the peasant revolutionary behaviors in Jiangxi and Hunan. Although the moral economy approach offers a powerful insight into peasant rebellions in the twentieth century, its assumption that all precapitalist rural societies were closed economies is problematic. Since in many parts of the world precapitalist rural societies had long had significant market elements, the moral economy approach is not suitable for studying these societies.

The Rational Choice Theory The rational choice theory of peasant revolutions emerged as a counterargument to the moral economy theory. The theory argues that peasant revolutions occurred because of individuals’ decisions based on rational calculation. Migdal, while recognizing defending subsistence ethics as an important cause of peasant rebellions, argues that this factor alone was not sufficient to propel individual peasants to join the collective actions. At least initially, organizers of revolutions must use inducements in exchange for peasants’ support and convince peasants that those inducements outweigh the risks involved in joining the revolution.34 As Migdal observes, peasants “seek individual material and social gains from the revolutionaries.”35 Thus revolutionaries must establish a social exchange process that both offers concrete material goods to peasants and addresses their mundane grievances. However, it is Samuel Popkin who systematically elaborates a rationalist theory of peasant revolution in his book The Rational Peasant. Popkin’s political economy approach proposes “a view of the peasant as a rational problem-solver, with a sense both of his own interests and of the need to bargain with others to achieve mutually acceptable outcomes.”36 Popkin’s political economy approach is based on two assumptions. First, there were no subsistence norms that guided peasants’ social behaviors. Many traditional peasant communities were characterized by exploitation and repression by the rich and powerful. Second, peasants are rational decision makers. They choose their actions based on the rational calculation of costs and benefits, not the norms and 33. Chen Xiping, 1990, “Commercialized Handcraft Industry in Hunan in Late Qing,” Changsha shuidian shiyuan xuebao, No. 8, p. 94. 34. Migdal, 1974, p. 240. 35. Ibid., p. 35. 36. Samuel Popkin, The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), p. iv.

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values of their society.37 In fact, peasants’ decisions regarding revolution embody the logic of investment. As observed by Popkin, “There is a unifying investment logic that can be applied to markets, villages, relations with agrarian elites, and collective action—whether the collective decision is to build villages or to rebuild them as part of a new society.”38 Participation in a revolution thus depends upon the peasant’s rational decision, which is essentially “his personal cost-benefit calculations about the expected returns on his own inputs.”39 Popkin also applies Olson’s theory of collective action to peasant revolutions and argues that, since revolution is a public good, the free-rider problem arises. This, he argues, makes it difficult for revolutions to emerge. Peasant revolution can only emerge when an outside political entrepreneur, the revolutionary organization, can offer some peasants localized and selective benefits such as fair land distribution, lower rents, and protection. Peasants must see the outside revolutionary organization as honest and credible. Otherwise, it will be seen as just another in a long line of corrupt tyrants, and peasants will not participate in a revolution. Therefore, according to Popkin, the collective goods, which are revolutions and revolutionary changes, come about only as by-products of the provision of selective goods to rational peasants.40 How well does rational choice theory explain peasant revolutions? Though parsimonious, Popkin’s utilitarian explanation of revolution has serious flaws. His narrow emphasis on material gains and interest maximization by peasants overlooks the social component of human actions. Individuals are defined and influenced by their surrounding norms, values, and socioeconomic structures. According to Popkin, however, peasants’ behavior is determined only by their calculation of immediate material gains. This rationalist perspective, according to Scott’s critique of Migdal’s study, which employs a similar logic, “amounts to banalization of the revolutionary process.”41 As Scott argues, “Revolutionary organizations not only give peasants protection, lower rents, and land, but they are experienced as doing this in the context of righting wrongs—in the contact of justice.”42 The rational choice theory of peasant revolutions completely ignores the moral dimension of human actions. Popkin’s rationalist assumption, Hy Van Luong argues, is “an abuse of utilitarian logic,” as it is “applied to a particular case without systematic consideration of the environmental and normative parameters of individual action.”43 According to him, 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

Ibid., pp. 17–27. Ibid., p. 245. Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., p. 13. Scott, 1977, p. 239. Ibid. See Hy Van Luong, “Agrarian Unrest from an Anthropological Perspective: The Case of Vietnam,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 17, No. 2 (January 1985), p. 153.

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an important aspect in the study of social action is that “the costs and benefits of human action are always informed by the complex structural principles of a specific sociocultural system.”44 Although normative rules of human society are not monolithic and deterministic, they do influence human actions in significant and even systematic ways. As a result, Popkin’s theory often fails to produce a good “empirical fit” with real cases of revolution. By Popkin’s logic, peasant revolutions would occur in areas where outside political forces have strong organizations and a strong ability to deliver selective goods. In areas where outside political forces are poorly organized to deliver selective goods, revolution is very unlikely to occur. However, the peasant revolutions in Jiangxi and Hunan refute this logic. In Hunan, outside organizations such as the CCP and KMT were weak and unable to penetrate to the local level. Few political entrepreneurs at the local level could reliably deliver selective and excludable material goods to peasants. Popkin’s theory cannot explain why, in the absence of credible political entrepreneurs and few selective benefits, Hunan peasants still rose up on a massive scale. His theory also has difficulty explaining why the spontaneous revolutionary actions by Hunan peasants were often, as in the case of land revolution, more radical than those of the outside political entrepreneurs. In contrast, in Jiangxi where the CCP had exceptional organizational capability, peasants still adopted conservative revolutionary behavior. The CCP had not only a strong entrepreneurial ability to mobilize Jiangxi peasants due to its extensive party-state structures, but it also employed selective benefits to induce peasants to participate in the revolution. Historical materials detailed these incentives. For example, to overcome peasants’ unwillingness to join the Red Army, the CCP created special material incentives for those who joined the army. In the Stipulation on the Preferential Treatment of Red Army Soldiers promulgated in 1931, Red Army soldiers were granted the following privileges: Provision 4: When in service, if a soldier’s family lacked laborers to till the land, the soviet government was responsible for sending laborers to till and harvest all the land. Provision 6: When in service, the soldier and his family were exempted from all government taxes. Provision 8: When in service, the soldier and his family enjoyed a 5% price discount for purchases in state stores. Provision 11: When in service, the children of soldiers are exempted from all education expenses.45 44. Ibid. 45. See Jiangxi Provincial Soviet Government, 1931, “Regulations on Preferential Treatment for Soldiers of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Red Army,” Zhongyang geming genjudi shiliao xuanbian (ZGGSX), Vol. 2, p. 115.

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These special benefits were substantial and selective. Extraction by the Jiangxi Soviet government in support of its war efforts was extremely heavy, including numerous levies and taxes. Provision 6 was a major benefit to soldiers’ families. In the words of one study in 1933, the Red Army soldiers and their families in the soviet area actually became a privileged class with special social status and interests.46 However, efforts by the CCP to induce peasants into the revolution still failed. The coercive methods used by the CCP local cadres, the planned draft system, and massive desertion from the Red Army only testified to the fact that selective benefits were not sufficient to motivate peasants to become involved in the revolutionary process. They imply that rational decision making and selective benefits alone are not sufficient to account for peasant revolutions. When applied to the two revolutions under study, the logics of rational choice theory fall apart.

The Structural Theories Studies under the structural approach seek to show what enduring properties of agrarian societies may have contributed to the rise of peasant revolutions. Unlike the moral economy perspective that attributes the cause of peasant revolutions to outside forces, such as imperialism and capitalism, the structural perspective locates it within the peasant societies. This allows us to find more proximate conditions and causes of peasant revolutions. The causal chain can be shortened and made more precise. Moreover, this structural perspective avoids the extreme position of rational choice theory that revolution is purely a matter of individual decision making. Focusing on the structural properties of agrarian societies allows us to see the larger framework of human actions. Currently there are two traditions within the structural approach. The first focuses on the power structures in peasant communities and the second on the structure of economic relationships in various peasant societies. Although the moral economy approach generally attributes the cause of peasant revolutions to external forces and their disruptive impact on the traditional norms of peasant societies, Wolf has also tried to relate peasant revolutions to certain structural factors in rural societies. On the one hand, he argues that the middle peasants are most revolutionary. “The poor peasant or the landless laborer who depends on a landlord for the largest part of his livelihood, or the totality of it, has no tactical power” and consequently is “unable to pursue the course of rebellion.”47 On the other hand, middle peasants and peasants who live in geographically marginal areas inaccessible to government influence have much greater tactical power. As Wolf concludes, “Ultimately, the decisive factor in making a peasant rebellion possible lies 46. For this view, see Cheng Shengchang, 1933, “Land Problem in the Communist Red Areas,” Guowen zhoubao, Vol. 10. 47. Wolf, 1969, pp. 290–91.

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in the relation of the peasantry to the field of power which surrounds it. A rebellion cannot start from a situation of complete impotence.”48 Thus, peasant societies with a large portion of middle peasants or located in geographically isolated areas have much greater potential for peasant revolutions than those societies with a large portion of poor peasants or ones located in geographically accessible areas. The cases of Hunan and Jiangxi, however, do not support this argument. First, both provinces had similar peasant populations. As Table 2.1 demonstrates, the percentages of owner-cultivators, owner-tenants, and tenants in the two provinces were strikingly similar. The large percentage of poor peasants (70%–80% of the entire population) in Hunan did not prevent Hunan peasants from effectively waging a sweeping revolution. In contrast, Jiangxi peasants lived in a truly isolated and geographically marginal hilly area and should thus have had a higher revolutionary potential. In fact, Jiangxi peasants did not face much counterpower at the local level as a result of the hegemony maintained by the CCP and its Red Army. Jiangxi peasants, however, were not inclined to exercise their power. Skocpol also uses a structural approach to study peasant revolutions. Although she focuses on the great social revolutions in France, Russia, and China, she nonetheless argues that their occurrence required a conjunction of international nationstate competition, state breakdown, and massive peasant uprisings. As she points out, “Peasant revolts have been the crucial insurrectionary ingredient in virtually all actual (i.e. successful) social revolutions to date, and certainly in the French, Russian and Chinese Revolutions.”49 As for the emergence of peasant uprisings, she argues that a set of structural conditions must exist. Uprisings are likely when the peasant community has strong solidarity, landlords lack direct economic and political control at the community level, and there is relaxation of state coercive sanctions against peasant revolts.50 Many have criticized Skocpol’s theory for its failure to account for the Chinese case.51 Because of the residential pattern of the Chinese countryside and the structure of the Chinese rural economy, the Chinese peasantry in general lacked both political and economic autonomy and lived under strong landlord-class control. This was especially true in South China where high tenancy rates and high population density deprived poor peasants of any political and economic autonomy. Moreover, as Chapter 4 will discuss in detail, Hunan peasants had long been subjected to

48. Ibid., p. 290. 49. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 112–13. 50. Ibid., pp. 115–17. 51. For criticisms of Skocpol’s structural theory and its misfit with the Chinese case, see Jerome L. Himmelstein and Michael S. Kimmel, “States and Social Revolutions: The Implications and Limits of Skocpol’s Structural Model,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 86, No. 5 (1985), pp. 1145–54.

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exceptionally strong political control by the landlord class, who maintained a repressive militia system at the community level. The general weakness of these power-structural approaches, whether they focus on the types of peasants with tactical powers or the autonomy of peasants’ communities, is that they do not treat the important question of why peasants, poor or middle, autonomous or dependent, should rise up in the first place to overthrow the existing order. To be fair, Skocpol assumes that peasants already possess a strong predisposition toward rebellion because of their “omnipresent grievances.”52 They are thus merely waiting for opportunities to revolt, which can be facilitated by macrostructural forces such as interstate wars and state breakdown. Nonetheless, Skocpol offers no causal mechanism for her theory. According to her logic, the existence of strong peasant communities is positively associated with the outbreak of revolution. As Edgar Kiser and Michael Hechter put it, Even if we grant the validity of this causal inference, a satisfactory explanation must reveal why revolution occurs where peasant communities are strong. What is the mechanism that links revolutionary outcomes with this particular structural precondition?53

Theories that focus on power structures thus are not true theories of peasant revolutions because they lack dynamic causal mechanisms that can explain why peasants rebel in the first place. At best, they provide us with some of the structural conditions that either favor or impede the development of peasant rebellions once they emerge. If focusing on the power structures in agrarian communities has not produced a dynamic theory of peasant revolutions with well-specified causal mechanisms, there is another structural tradition that focuses on how the structure of economic relationships in peasant communities contributes to peasant revolutions. This approach is represented by Arthur Stinchcombe and Jeffrey Paige. Stinchcombe argues that different types of agricultural enterprises give rise to different types of agrarian class conflict. There are five types of agricultural enterprises: 1) the manorial or hacienda system, 2) the plantation system, 3) the ranch system, 4) the family small-holding system, and 5) the family-size tenancy system. According to Stinchcombe, in the first three systems the lower classes tend to be politically impotent and apathetic and thus difficult to organize. In the family smallholding system, the lower classes tend to be united with the upper classes in opposition to urban interests. Only the family-size tenancy system has the potential for radical struggles by peasants since the structure of the conflict between the rentier and tenant is a zero-sum game. The lower the rent, the higher the tenant’s income. 52. Skocpol, 1979, p. 115. 53. Edgar Kiser and Michael Hechter, “The Role of General Theory in Comparative-Historical Sociology,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 97, No. 1 (1991), p. 6.

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On this basis Stinchcombe argues that the logical outcome of the zero-sum-game relationship between the upper classes and tenants is rural revolution.54 Paige’s highly acclaimed study is an extension and refinement of Stinchcombe’s theory. He examines how different agricultural systems define the structure of economic relationships between cultivators and noncultivators and as a result, different types of conflict arise between the two sides. Paige seeks to build a theory of rural class conflict which defines these recurring patterns of conflict in terms of interactions between the economic and political behavior of cultivators and that of noncultivators and predicts the circumstances under which these conflicts lead to cultivator social movements in general and agrarian revolution in particular.55

According to Paige, “The fundamental causal variable in this theory is the relationship of both cultivators and noncultivators to the factors of agricultural production as indicated by their principal source of incomes.”56 Based on this variable, as illustrated by Table 2.7, Paige argues that different agricultural systems create different economic relationships between cultivators and noncultivators. Paige’s theory is that agrarian revolutions take place only in the tenancy system. In this system the economic relationship between the cultivator class and the Table 2.7 Paige’s typology of agrarian conflicts Cultivator

Land

Wages

Commercial hacienda (revolt)

Sharecropping and migratory labor (revolution)

Small holding (reform)

Plantation (reform)

Capital

Noncultivator

Land

Source: Paige, 1975, p. 15. 54. Arthur Stinchcombe, “Agricultural Enterprises and Rural Class Relations,” in Jason L. Finkle and Richard W. Gable, eds., Political Development and Social Change (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1971). 55. Jeffrey Paige, Agrarian Revolutions: Social Movements and Export Agriculture in the Underdeveloped World (New York: Free Press, 1975), p. 10. 56. Ibid.

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noncultivator class is zero sum: since the noncultivator class draws its income solely from the land, it “is associated with a static agricultural product and therefore creates zero-sum conflict between cultivators and noncultivators. As a result compromise in economic conflicts is difficult.”57 The landlords in this situation rely on political influence to secure land and labor, lack the resources to share their wealth with the tenants, and so refuse any political compromise. Because a reformist outcome is impossible, tenants can improve their situation only by radical and violent socioeconomic changes. As Paige argues, the tenancy agricultural system has a strong internal dynamic toward agrarian revolution.58 Compared with structural theories that focus on power relationships, Paige is able to provide a causal mechanism for his theory that more successfully answers the question of why peasants should resort to agrarian revolutions. The zero-sum nature of the economic relationship motivates sharecroppers and migratory laborers to pursue radical political changes. He also better specifies the conditions under which agrarian revolutions are more likely to occur by restricting them to certain agricultural systems. However, this approach still has problems, both theoretically and empirically. On the theoretical level, the theories of Stinchcombe and Paige are economically reductionist. Margaret Somers and Walter Goldfrank argue that this “agronomic determinism” makes Paige more of a materialist than Marx. “He loads the causal weight heavily on the force of production rather than the relation of production. He thus gives theoretical priority to economic factors which may have been historically determined by previous class and political struggles.”59 Paige’s economic focus therefore gives his theory a logic similar to the rational choice theory. Revolution arises because both tenants and landlords are in a zero-sum situation with respect to their material gains. Tenants can make gains only through a revolution, thus they will revolt. Hy Van Luong criticizes this hidden utilitarian logic in Paige’s theory: “Paige fundamentally shares Popkin’s view on the dynamics of lords and peasants’ action. The logic of economic cost and benefit prevails in both works.” Like Popkin’s rational choice theory, Paige’s theory “gives extremely limited attention” to the “sociocultural matrix of human action.”60 Paige’s economic structural theory neglects other structural relationships between the upper and lower classes in a rural society that effectively interact with and compensate for the economic relationship. These include many social and value structures like kinship and communal norms that also shape each actor’s perception of 57. Ibid., p. 23. 58. For further discussion on the relationship between the tenancy system and radical agrarian movement, see ibid., pp. 58–63. 59. Margaret Somers and Walter Goldfrank, “The Limits of Agronomic Determinism: A Critique of Paige’s Agrarian Revolution,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1979), p. 453. 60. Hy Van Luong, 1985, pp. 156–57, 162.

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“interests” apart from a share of material production. These may change each actor’s perception of their interest pay-off structures and thus change their relationships into those of a non-zero-sum game. The weakness of the economic structural approach inevitably undermines its explanatory ability. Both Jiangxi and Hunan had very high and similar tenancy rates and rent rates. However, poor peasants in Jiangxi would not have commenced a revolution by themselves if the CCP had not been hegemonic in the region. In fact, they remained passive and conservative even after the CCP and the Red Army created a revolutionary situation. This chapter shows that although existing theories expand our understanding of the causes and dynamics of peasant revolutions, each has theoretical and empirical limitations. As a result, none of them can explain the puzzle of this study. This requires an alternative approach to the study of peasant revolutions. The next chapter advances an approach that focuses on the organizational frameworks of peasant communities.

3 Community as an Organization

One important aspect of peasant communities is not examined by any of the theories reviewed: formal organizations within peasant communities. This book argues that studying the organizational framework of peasant communities provides a promising alternative approach that may explain the puzzle presented by the revolutions in Hunan and Jiangxi. This chapter first examines the role of formal cooperative institutions in agrarian communities. It then presents a comparative history of peasant communities with strong internal organizations. It discusses the origins of cooperative institutions in peasant communities and analyzes how the different origins of cooperative institutions influenced the organizational principles of agrarian communities. The last section hypothesizes about the relationship between communal organizational principles and agrarian revolutions.

Community Cooperative Institutions The assumption of communal organizational context as an independent variable in the study of agrarian revolutions is based on the fact that all human social units require formal organizations to coordinate and control collective action. As Jack M. Potter and May N. Diaz point out, “Although it may be that the peasant family is the most self-sufficient small unit formed in any society, it cannot exist as a social isolate. Peasants must be able to call upon members of other families for mutual economic, social, and emotional help.”1 For this reason, many agrarian communities establish cooperative institutions to organize themselves into collectivities that are capable of performing functions that individual families cannot. According to Michael Hechter, cooperative institutions arise to facilitate the provision of joint goods that cannot be produced by individual efforts: The demand for cooperative institutions arises from individuals’ desires to consume jointly-produced goods that cannot be obtained by following individual strategies. Cooperative institutions are generally formed to take advantage of 1.

Jack M. Potter and May N. Diaz, “Introduction: The Social Life of Peasants,” in Jack M. Potter, May N. Diaz, and George M. Foster, eds., Peasant Society: A Reader (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), p. 156.

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Revolutions as Organizational Change positive externalities, such as increasing returns to scale, risk-sharing, and costsharing. The demand for joint goods is heightened by contextual events like wars, invasions, epidemics, and natural disasters, as well as by endogenous processes like rapid demographic growth.2

Formal organization is an important component of social institutions that perform cooperative functions. As John Meyer and Brian Rowan observe, formal organization emerges because “rational formal structures are assumed to be the most effective way to coordinate and control the complex relational networks” in social life and production.3 In other words, “the coordination and control of activities are the critical dimensions on which formal organizations have succeeded.”4 To James G. March and Herbert H. Simon, formal organization is a problem-facing and problem-solving phenomenon. It emerges as a response to the challenges from the environment that human society seeks to overcome.5 Agrarian communities have strong imperatives to adopt formal organizations. Activities such as survival, production, irrigation, and defense all involve extensive relational works and thus require that a community is able to coordinate and control collective actions. As Hechter argues, “shifts in a variety of environmental and demographic conditions will heighten demand for certain kinds of joint goods and favor the emergence of institutions supplying these goods.”6 Formal organizational structures facilitate the control and coordination tasks in the provision of joint goods for agrarian communities. Because of the importance of community organization, Victor V. Magagna even concludes, “In agrarian societies the key existential problem is how to organize the production and distribution of the means of subsistence, and we can interpret community institutions as the core organizational framework in which that problem is managed across time and space.”7 Although agrarian communities must organize themselves through formal cooperative institutions to control and regulate communal affairs, the capacities of formal cooperative institutions vary in different peasant communities. That is, some communities are more effectively regulated by their cooperative institutions than others. We can perceive the issue as a continuum ranging from communities whose internal affairs are entirely regulated by cooperative institutions to communities where formal 2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7.

Michael Hechter, “The Emergence of Cooperative Social Institutions,” in Michael Hechter, KarlDieter Opp, and Reinhard Wippler, eds., Social Institutions: Their Emergence, Maintenance and Effects (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1990), p. 16. John Meyer and Brian Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structures as Myth and Ceremony,” in Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio, eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 42. Ibid., p. 43. James G. March and Herbert H. Simon, Organization (New York: Wiley, 1958). Hechter, 1990, p. 21. Victor V. Magagna, Communities of Grain: Rural Rebellion in Comparative Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 17.

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cooperative institutions either do not exist or have only limited impact on community affairs. The representative type of strongly organized agrarian community is the so-called closed corporate community. In his classic study on the subject, Eric Wolf defines such a community as one that maintains a considerable measure of communal jurisdiction over land, restricts membership, operates a religious system, redistributes surplus wealth, and bars entry of goods and ideas produced outside the community.8 In contrast, in a weakly organized community, best represented by the so-called open community, communal jurisdiction over land is absent, membership is unrestricted, and wealth is not redistributed. Magagna also uses communal control of productive property as a measure of community organizational level. He identifies three types of communities. The most organized are the “redistributive communities,” which are the effective owners of productive property. The Russian peasant communes, mir, which practiced periodic redistribution of land among community households, represent this type of community. The second type of community strikes “an institutional balance between household proprietorship and community control.” He calls these communities “regulative communities.” The common-field village in medieval Europe is an example. The last type is the least organized and is referred to by Magagna as the “residual type.” Community institutions here “play a marginal and episodic role in the allocation of productive property.”9 Therefore, although peasant communities have imperatives to organize through formal cooperative institutions to produce joint goods, the extent to which communities are regulated by these institutions varies significantly. In Chinese rural areas before 1949, the organizational level of peasant communities in North China differed remarkably from those in the South. Peasant communities in northern China generally had weak communal organizational frameworks. The formal cooperative institutions of these communities, if they existed at all, had only limited influence over community affairs. If agrarian communities varied in their organizational levels, what accounted for their differences? I argue that community organizational level was determined along two dimensions. One was environmental and included ecological, demographic, technological, and social challenges. The other was the capacity of state institutions to provide effective support to communities under environmental stress. This support included the provision of law and order, relief in times of famine and natural disaster, and effective organization of public cooperative efforts (e.g., the construction of irrigation facilities) to meet environmental challenges. 8. 9.

Eric Wolf, “Closed Corporate Peasant Communities in Mesoamerica and Central Java,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 13, No. 1 (1957), pp. 456–61. Magagna, 1991, pp. 252–53.

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Agrarian communities with high organizational levels were most likely to emerge in places that experienced severe environmental challenges and where the institutions of state could not provide effective support. Such communities had to rely on their own resources to survive the environmental challenges. They had to create strong cooperative institutions with wide-ranging powers to organizationally control and regulate community resources. In contrast, weakly organized communities were likely to emerge in places where environmental challenges were minimal and where the state could provide effective support to communities confronting environmental stress. In this situation, peasant communities had little incentive to create strong cooperative institutions. The strength of state capacity also provided a political reason for the variation in communal organizational levels. Strong states could provide some kind of protection against the lords or other local power groups who always wanted to capture and control communities. States often had an incentive to assist peasant communities’ efforts to gain autonomy from lords in order to weaken the latter’s political power. This occurred, as will be discussed in greater detail, in the histories of Europe and Central America. However, if the state was weak and could not provide protection, communities had to consolidate internally and use their own collective power to resist lords. In places with weak state institutions, we expect to see highly organized peasant communities. Historically, peasant communities with high organizational levels emerged in many parts of the world. Below is a discussion of strong peasant communities in Europe, Japan, and Central America.

A Brief History of Corporate Peasant Communities in the World European Agrarian Communities from the Middle Ages until the Nineteenth Century Strong corporate peasant communities dominated much of rural Europe from the late medieval era until quite recently. According to Jerome Blum in his classic study of the subject, “The village community as a corporate body managing communal resources, directing the economic activities and supervising the communal life of its residents first emerged in Europe during the later part of the Middle Ages and spread across the Continent in the succeeding centuries. Its disintegration began in the eighteenth century and completed itself in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”10

10. Jerome Blum, “The European Village as Community: Origins and Functions,” Agricultural History, Vol. 45, No. 3 (1971b), p. 541.

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European corporate communities during their centuries of existence enjoyed significant power in community affairs. Although this power varied in extent, a corporate community was “simultaneously an economic community, a fiscal community, a mutual-assistance community, a religious community, the defender of peace and order within its boundaries, and the guardian of the public and private morals of its residents.”11 The most important powers of European corporate communities were economic ones: Usually the community’s most active power concerned its coordination of the farming activities of the villagers. In open-field country, where strips of each household lay intermingled and were tilled under the two- or three-field system, the community, either through the decisions of its assembly or the orders of its officers, set the time of plowing, sowing, harvesting, haying, and vintage. It decided what crops should be planted and when the harvested fields should be opened for pasturing, and it set the rates for gleaning.12

In many parts of Eastern Europe and in some places in Western Europe, land was redistributed periodically among the households of communities. The best example was the Russian mir. The mir periodically redistributed land among its households either on the basis of household numbers or in proportion to their total labor force.13 Another broad responsibility of these communities concerned the maintenance of internal order and the enforcement of compliance with communal regulation. “Communities levied punishment against wrongdoers; maintained a pound for stray animals; apprehended trespassers; and made sure that everyone understood and observed the rules concerning the use of plowland, pasture, forest, and all the other resources of the village.”14 Communities also supervised the moral and religious life of their members and punished drunkenness, gambling, and prostitution. These corporate communities also had the power to adjudicate disputes among members. The community assembly “had the right to hold its own court, presided over by village officials, in which the villagers were tried for minor offenses.”15 In sum, peasant communities in many parts of Europe were internally highly organized. Community organizations had effective control not only over the moral life of their members but also over the use of productive resources. As Susan Reynolds

11. Ibid., p. 542. 12. Ibid. 13. For more discussion on the Russian land communes, see Christine D. Worobec, Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 17–29. Also of interest, see Roger Bartlett, ed., Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia: Communal Farms in Imperial and Early Soviet Society (London: Macmillan, 1990). 14. Blum, 1971b, p. 546. 15. Ibid., p. 545.

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points out, European communities since medieval times were both property owners and managers.16 Before the late Middle Ages, European communities lacked organizational powers. As economic historian Richard Hoffmann observes, European agriculture in earlier periods was “traditional individualistic subsistence” characterized by a singlehousehold economy.17 What then accounted for, in the words of Reynolds, the later “trend towards collectivity”? Two factors, environmental challenges and the strength and capability of state institutions, could explain this trend in late medieval Europe. At the core of the European corporate community was the common-field (or open-field) system, which gave rise to strong communal control over economic activities. According to Carl J. Dahlman, the common-field system had the following features: (1) the village was defined as consisting of a certain amount of land, divided into commons and arable; (2) the arable land, when used for cropping, was privately owned and controlled; (3) the nonarable land was owned collectively by the village community; and (4) the privately owned arable land became collectively owned grazing areas and then reverted to privately owned arable land again.18 According to economic historians, Europe in the late Middle Ages faced an unusual demographic challenge in that it experienced a rapid population growth. These historians identify this as the major cause of the common-field system. According to Hoffmann, the spread of the common-field system and population growth were directly linked. To relieve demographic pressures, communities adopted a “response that sacrificed individual control over production for the sake of preserving minimal subsistence levels for a maximum peasant population.”19 Specifically, the common-field system tried to solve a conflict between traditional livestock raising and communities’ new needs to increase cereal production as an intensification measure to feed a growing population. Keeping the cows of one household out of the corn of others was a big problem. The common-field system resolved this problem of conflicting uses of the same land. It gave the community broad collective management power to decide when to plow, what to grow, when to harvest, when to convert the arable land into collectively owned grazing land, and when to convert grazing land back to arable land again. Thus, both livestock raising and intensified cereal production could be maintained.20 As Dahlman concludes, the 16. See Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 151. 17. For more discussion on individualistic European peasant economies before the advent of commonfield villages, see Richard C. Hoffmann, “Medieval Origins of the Common Fields,” in William N. Parker and Eric L. Jones, eds., European Peasants and Their Markets: Essays in Agrarian Economic History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 33–41. 18. See Carl J. Dahlman, The Open Field System and Beyond: A Property Rights Analysis of an Economic Institution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 25. 19. Hoffman, 1975, p. 52. 20. Ibid., pp. 52–64.

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common-field system of European peasant communities was “an organizational structure with a well-defined purpose.”21 The political situation in medieval Europe also facilitated the organizational trend toward collectivity by communities. According to Charles Tilly, European political structures until AD 1500 were highly decentralized as a result of the collapse of the Roman Empire.22 Central governments were weak and faced resistance from powerful nobles and autonomous towns and cities. Therefore, in medieval Europe, “unlike the Chinese and Roman state-builders of earlier times, the Europeans of 1500 and later did not ordinarily expand from a highly organized center to a weakly organized periphery.”23 European states in the medieval era rarely provided support to communities trying to meet environmental challenges. The decentralized political structure also created another reason for highly organized communities in Europe. As Reynolds discusses, centralized authority collapsed in earlier periods, and lords became autocratic rulers in local affairs. They tried to control and exploit peasant communities. This created conflicts between lords and communities, which “helped to consolidate peasant communities” to resist and meet the demands of the lords.24 Magagna also notes that during this period conflicts between communities and lords concerned whether authority over communities belonged to the lords or the communities themselves. Since “few if any national institutions in which elite and popular interests could be articulated” existed at the time in Europe, communities had to resort to collective power to resist lords.25 Only in a later era when strong and centralized European absolutist states began to develop could communities rely more on the support of the state to counter landed elites. As European absolutist states emerged, because of the power struggle between the nobles and the kings, the state tried to strengthen the autonomy of communities to weaken the influence of lords. Blum observes that states of the later period often sided with communities to weaken the power of lords. Hilton L. Root, in his study of French absolutism and its relationship to the peasantry, also notes that since the seventeenth century the state began to use the court system and the growing state bureaucracy to protect communities from lords.26 However, state protection was 21. Dahlman, 1980, p. 2. 22. Charles Tilly, “Reflections on the History of European State-Making,” in Charles Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 21. 23. Ibid., pp. 22–24. 24. For more discussion of how lords’ control efforts helped consolidate peasant communities in medieval Europe, see Susan Reynolds, 1984, pp. 128–30. 25. Magagna, 1991, p. 253. 26. For state protections of communities in this period, see Blum, 1971b, pp. 567–68. For the French case, see Hilton L. Root, Peasants and King in Burgundy: Agrarian Foundations of French Absolutism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 155–83.

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not available to European peasant communities in the late medieval era, and communities had to consolidate through strong cooperative institutions to resist lords’ attempts at control. Peasant Communities in Late Medieval Japan In late medieval Japan many peasant communities resembled their European counterparts in that strong community organizations effectively controlled and regulated many aspects of village life. These communities were called So communities. Hitomi Tonomura defines a So community as “a village-based corporate group marked by various forms of collective ownership and administration.”27 According to Tonomura: So villages administered their communities through a well-developed collective organization, which was marked by some or all of the following features: (1) the administrative role played by the miyaza, or shrine association, as the central organ of the corporate body; (2) collective jurisdiction over criminal matters; (3) issuance and enforcement of village ordinances; (4) communal ownership of property; (5) collective control of irrigation and the commons; (6) communal responsibility for tax payment.28

The emergence and proliferation of So communities in late medieval Japan can also be explained by the two factors of environmental challenge and strength of state institutions. As Tonomura observes, “Stimulating and reflecting the spread of So villages was a particular set of economic and political circumstances.”29 The environmental challenge at the time was primarily a demographic one, generated by population growth. Like the medieval European communities that also experienced demographic pressure, So communities needed to intensify the cultivation. The intensification of agriculture led to a series of technological changes. Double-cropping methods spread across Japan in the late fourteenth century. By at least the mid-fifteenth century, even triple-cropping was practiced in some areas. According to Tonomura, the collective organization that developed in villages during this period resulted from these economic advances in agriculture. Rice-based farming always required collective efforts and local institutions, and arable land, irrigation, and commons had already been managed from about the eleventh century. The intensification of agriculture in the late medieval era in response to demographic pressures required further collective efforts to meet the greater work demands of intensified cultivation. As Tonomura notes, by the fourteenth century villagers had to participate in collective works 27. Hitomi Tonomura, Community and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan: The Corporate Villages of Tokuchin-ho (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), p. 3. 28. Ibid., p. 9. 29. Ibid., p. 7.

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in order for the entire community to realize greater output and profit. Intensified farming demanded togetherness more than ever, especially in certain seasons, such as the times of planting and harvesting, and for specific purposes, such as working to convert fields into paddies. Moreover, conflicts over rights and access to water sources shared with other communities often required villagers to confront the opponents with their concerted strength.30

Besides the challenges posed by intensified agriculture, the political situation in late medieval Japan also contributed to the rise of So communities. Specifically, the So village was an outcome of the decentralized political system in Japan. According to Tonomura, in this period there were “the increasing articulation of political authority at the local level” and a “downward diffusion” of power.31 At the center around Kyoto, the state authority was represented by the imperial family, aristocrats, and religious institutions. They were called kenmon (gates of power and authority). However, local leaders of various ranks resisted and challenged their authority. The local challengers were mostly warriors, who, to realize maximum strength, “often organized themselves into collectives in which members were united by a non-hierarchical set of bonds.”32 Since kenmon, the state central authority, was a coalition of several ruling groups and institutions, each of which lacked the strength to eliminate the others, it could not produce a supreme ruler or institution. Thus, the response of kenmon to local power challenges was weak and ineffective. As a result, the rise of local power centers in medieval Japan “contributed to the dispersal of central political authority,” and the influence of kenmon “over the country eventually diminished.”33 Thus, in medieval Japan, the state was weak, and the distribution of political power was fragmented. This weak central state authority enabled newly emerging local power groups to exploit village communities. Communities faced exploitation by local warriors who “held direct and effective means of squeezing local revenues.”34 In this political situation, village communities had to strengthen internal cohesion to respond to the various proliferating local power groups. The growth of collective organizations, such as the So, was characteristic of the decentralized political order of the period: “in the absence of hegemonic rule, the So villages equipped themselves with their own governing apparatus, accumulating shrine land, and solidifying the economic base for community autonomy.”35 In sum, corporate peasant communities with strong cooperative institutions emerged in late medieval Japan. Just as in Europe during the same period, the trend to 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

Ibid., pp. 7–8. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., pp. 8–9. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid.

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collectivity was attributable both to environmental challenges and to weak state institutions and capabilities. Peasant communities had to rely on community cooperative institutions to utilize the collective power of villagers to meet both environmental and political challenges. However, even after entering the Tokugawa era (1600–1868), when a fairly centralized state authority was established, the strong cooperative nature of Japanese rural communities persisted. As Thomas C. Smith argues in his classic study of the agrarian society of the period, “We must think of the seventeenth-century village as consisting, not of a number of autonomous farming units, but of clusters of mutually dependent ones.”36 As in the late medieval era, communities in the Tokugawa era relied heavily on cooperative institutions to organize collective work needed in a rice-based economy. According to Smith, “As cooperative economic units, the groups performed a number of indispensable functions for their members. They mobilized labor for tasks that recurred more or less regularly which no family could cope with individually— through cooperation the group as a whole attained a degree of self-sufficiency that was impossible for any of its members alone.”37 According to Japanese scholar Tadashi Fukutake, a village in the Tokugawa era was a typical “village community—where even though individualistic production becomes predominant, a certain amount of co-operation based on communal ownership is an essential supplementary element of productive activity.”38 He also attributes community cooperation during this period to the technological environment of communities with a rice-based economy: “irrigated rice agriculture is not something which can be carried on by individual households each exclusively relying on its own labor.”39 Communal cooperative institutions began to decline only after the Meiji Revolution when the individualistic tenancy system and capitalistic market production began to transform the Japanese rural economy.40 Corporate Peasant Communities in Central America since the Spanish Conquest According to Wolf ’s classic discussion of corporate peasant communities in Mesoamerica, peasant communities in the region were “closed corporate communities” and exercised broad powers. Most notable was outright communal control over 36. Thomas C. Smith, The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1959), p. 50. 37. Ibid. 38. Tadashi Fukutake, Japanese Rural Society (Tokyo: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 84. 39. Ibid., p. 82. 40. For discussion on the decline of cooperative villages in Japan after Meiji, see Fukutake, 1967, pp. 86–87; also Smith, 1959, pp. 142–55.

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land. In Mexico in 1854, there were some 5,000 “agrarian corporations” in possession of 11.6 million hectares. These communities also maintained an extensive religious cult system on which they spent a significant amount of community surplus wealth. Moreover, these communities maintained redistributive mechanisms to achieve leveling among community members. They practiced a subsistence economy and guaranteed the survival of their members.41 However, according to Wolf, corporate communities in Central America largely emerged after the Spanish conquest. “There is general recognition that thoroughgoing changes divided the post-Hispanic communities from their pre-conquest predecessors.”42 Again, the causes of the emergence of corporate communities were both environmental and political. In part, the new organizational configuration was the result of diseases carried by the Spanish decimating three-quarters of the Indian population. As a consequence, Indians were forced to concentrate their population in new communities to handle their agricultural needs and to survive. The colonial government, which organized large-scale resettlement of the Indian population after their land was taken over by colonists, also contributed to this trend. The new Indian communities were given rights to land as a group; this measure facilitated the formation of new corporate communities with communal jurisdiction over land. According to Nancy Farriss, heavy population loss and migration gave rise to the development of new close social ties among Indians. These new close ties, such as fictive kinship, were useful in “reshuffling and reconstituting networks that were disrupted or destroyed” during the conquest.43 Besides the environmental challenges, corporate communities also resulted from weak state administration of Indian peasant communities immediately after the conquest. Since the old state system was destroyed during the conquest, the new colonial government, according to John Tutino, long lacked the capacity to build up effective state institutions and direct rule of Indians.44 Moreover, the government of Spain also adopted a policy of spatial separation between colonists and native communities for fear that colonists might accumulate too much power. Native Indian communities were granted relative autonomy for self-rule.45 The state usually tried to limit

41. For these discussions on the corporate communities in Central America, see Wolf, 1957, pp. 2–5. 42. Ibid., p. 7. 43. For more discussion on the need of the Indians to form new social ties after the colonial conquest and depopulation, see Nancy M. Farriss, Maya Society under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 258. 44. For the colonial government’s lack of ability to exercise direct rule in Indian communities after conquest, see John Tutino, “Agrarian Social Changes and Peasant Rebellion in Nineteenth-Century Mexico: The Example of Chalco,” in Friedrich Katz, ed., Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution: Rural Social Conflict in Mexico (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 97–98. 45. For the policy of spatial separation between the local communities and colonists and the policy of self-government for Indians, see Tutino, 1988, pp. 98–99 and Wolf, 1957, p. 10.

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the power of colonial elites by protecting the autonomy of peasant communities and defending their rights. The result of this weak state rule and relative autonomy of communities was that Indians were left alone to survive by themselves. As Farriss notes, this “left the responsibility for public welfare, and indeed all matters of local administration, in  Maya hands.”46 This situation from another aspect forced Indians to consolidate and utilize the collective powers of the community. To Indians, “survival was a joint enterprise in which the whole community participated.”47 As Farriss concludes, “That such a system had to be provided by the Maya themselves is indisputable. They certainly could not count on the Spanish for much help.”48 Thus, the rise of strong corporate communities in Central America was caused by a series of environmental and political factors. The heavy depopulation after the conquest and migration to new settlements forced Indians to adopt tight-knit community structures for collective survival. The weak state institutions of the early colonial government and the policy of self-rule for native Indian communities also forced communities to rely on themselves to provide joint goods, such as welfare, subsistence, and defense against encroaching colonists. Corporate communities were natural outgrowths of these environmental and political factors.

Origins of Community Cooperative Institutions The previous section discusses how cooperative institutions emerged in peasant communities in many parts of the world as community organizational efforts to provide joint goods. However, even though environmental imperatives required community cooperation, the creation of cooperative institutions, or the community organizational framework, is not an automatic process. This is because any joint goods provided by community cooperative institutions are also public goods available to every member of a community. The logic of collective action means that the provision of public goods is notoriously problematic. Michael Taylor argues that it was difficult to provide public goods, such as social order, in traditional peasant communities because many of them were internally quasi-anarchic. Within such communities there was no concentration of enforcement power, which is associated only with significantly differentiated power structures.49 Public goods could not be provided in this situation because cooperation was unstable and the free-rider problem could not be eliminated without the concentration of enforcement power. 46. 47. 48. 49.

Farriss, 1984, p. 263. Ibid., p. 272. Ibid., p. 260. For this characterization of communities, see Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy, and Liberty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 35–36.

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However, cooperative institutions did emerge in peasant communities in many parts of the world. How can we explain the creation and maintenance of highly organized peasant communities? Hechter, in his study of cooperation, identifies two basic sources for the establishment of cooperative institutions. “On the one hand, institutions can be imposed upon a given population by some conqueror or overlord. . . . On the other hand, individuals with roughly equal power can create institutions voluntarily, in effect binding themselves to a joint project.”50 Hechter calls the second source a “contractarian process.” Cooperative Institutions through Imposition History provides many examples of Hechter’s two sources of imposition, by conquest and by an overlord. First, conquerors often brought to the new land some cooperative social and economic institutions that they had practiced. Through the use of coercion and superior resources, outside conquerors could impose a foreign social and economic cooperative practice on the native communities. Such was the imposition of community ownership of land by the Spanish conqueror on native Indian communities in Central America. The colonial government initiated large-scale resettlements of Indians after a severe decline in the native population and gave newly created Indian communities rights to land as a group.51 This imposition of land rights facilitated the development of strong corporate communities in Central America. Richardo Godoy found that, after the conquest in some parts of the Andes in South America, peasant communities practiced the common-field system, which had been widely adopted in Europe. Its adoption by the Indian communities was entirely due to the Spanish conquerors. Common-field agriculture crystalized in the Andes during a period of demographic collapse and heavy extraction of labor: When labor shortages occurred, the increased demand for rural workers during these periods created incentives for the Spanish Crown in the Andes to coordinate local agricultural activities, arrange common-field system, establish nucleated villages, and in doing so, release scarce manpower for the Crown, Church, and Spaniards.52

Thus, because of the power imbalance between the conquerors and the native communities, the former had the capacity to impose new cooperative institutions on local communities to serve their own self-interests. However, the imposition of these institutions also provided joint goods such as subsistence practice and a welfare system for native communities in Central and South America. 50. See Hechter, 1990, p. 15. 51. See Wolf, 1957, p. 7. 52. See Richardo Godoy, “The Evolution of Common-Field Agriculture in the Andes: A Hypothesis,” Comparative Study of Society and History, Vol. 33, No. 2 (1991), p. 396.

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Cooperative institutions have also been imposed by lords. Some historians have argued that in England the adoption of the common-field system was facilitated by strong lords. Reynolds observes that common-field systems were most likely to be established in places where there had already been “institutions through which to make and enforce agricultural regulations.”53 In England, the lords’ courts often served that purpose. As Reynolds notes, “It has been argued that strong lordship and an unfree peasantry were preconditions of a ‘farming community’ with regulated open fields.”54 This view is typical that cooperation, because it produces public goods, can be created only by imposition. Bruce Campbell also discusses the possible relationship between the adoption of the common-field system in English communities and the external powers of the lords. He notes that it was possible that in some places “once a peasant community had taken the relevant decision it may have referred the matter to its lord, on account of his superior authority, for implementation.”55 It should be pointed out, however, that the imposition of cooperative institutions by lords was most likely in relatively stable and established peasant communities because they would have already developed significant power differentiation within the community. This enabled some segments of the community, such as the lords, who commanded greater power and resources, to implement and enforce cooperation within communities. As Magagna points out, a power hierarchy in communities is conducive to the enforcement of rules and norms of cooperation. Thus, “institutional inequality can be a source of cohesion and solidarity” within the community by promoting cooperative institutions.56 Cooperative Institutions through Contractarian Process Although many peasant communities were quasi-anarchic internally and lacked power differentiation necessary to create cooperative institutions through imposition, they nevertheless developed voluntarily created cooperative institutions. Since the logic of collective action makes creating cooperative institutions problematic, how can we account for their emergence in communities without power differentiation? Social scientists have advanced three explanations for the possibility of voluntary cooperation in peasant communities. The first is the repeated game explanation. Although it is rational for players in a prisoner’s dilemma situation to defect rather than cooperate with each other, as Robert Axelrod shows, if the game is a 53. Reynolds, 1984, p. 124. 54. Ibid. 55. For more discussion on the relationship between lords and the common-field practice in England, see Bruce Campbell, “Commonfield Origins—The Regional Dimension,” in Trevor Rowley, ed., The Origins of Open-Field Agriculture (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble Books, 1981), p. 125. 56. Magagna, 1991, p. 15.

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larger iterated game, the individual player knows that its repeated nature provides each person with a tit-for-tat strategy and therefore cooperation becomes rational for them.57 Robert Bates uses this perspective to explain why social order could be maintained among the Nuer, an African tribe, in a stateless society. He argues that internal order is maintained within Nuer communities because members have to play a repeated game. A noncooperative act can be met in kind. Retaliation can take the form of direct action; “self-help” by the victim or the victim’s friends; or actions by the community such as loss of aid in herding, billeting, food acquisition, and access to water, resources that were distributed by the community.58 Bates’s explanation and the repeated game approach in general apply especially well to traditional peasant communities. These communities were characterized by their well-defined membership, closed nature, and lack of mobility of members. Community members relied on communal support and lacked the option of moving to another community and enjoying the same kind of support. As will be discussed later in greater detail, in traditional corporate communities, a member’s rights and privileges are associated with membership in a community. Outsiders who come to such a community do not enjoy them. Knowing it is unfeasible to move somewhere else, interactions among community members become an iterated supergame. Cooperative institutions can emerge in this context because community members find it rational to contribute to cooperative efforts to avoid sanctions and retaliation from others. Although it is possible to explain why cooperative institutions can be provided voluntarily through a repeated game perspective, this theory has also been criticized. The cooperative strategy in a repeated game rests on the assumption that players have perfect information. It is assumed that everyone has explicit knowledge of how much others are contributing to provide joint goods. In practice, however, a player cannot monitor the behavior of every other member. Time and limited information preclude. As a result, critics point out that repeated game explanation can only be applied to cooperation by the smallest of groups.59 In contrast, the second perspective on the voluntary emergence of cooperative institutions emphasizes organizational control designed to eliminate the free-rider problem and to promote cooperation. Since the major obstacle to cooperation is the public goods problem, one way to promote cooperation is to make the goods produced by cooperation become private goods. Only those who contribute can enjoy 57. For the repeated game approach, see Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984); Russell Hardin, Collective Action (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1982). 58. See Robert H. Bates, “The Preservation of Order in Stateless Societies: A Reinterpretation of EvansPritchard’s The Nuer,” in Robert H. Bates, Essays on the Political Economy of Rural Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 13–15. 59. Hechter, 1990, pp. 12–14.

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the benefits generated by cooperative work. To do this, a community has to design explicit organizational control mechanisms to monitor who is contributing and to exclude free-riders. Hechter calls this interpretation of voluntary cooperation the solidaristic approach: Rather than emerging spontaneously among self-interested actors each pursuing his own ends, institutions in this view are a product of solidarity. Solidarity can only arise among individuals who share some common ends. To attain these common ends, actors must establish a set of obligations as well as a mechanism that enforces compliance to these obligations. From this solidaristic perspective, institutions persist not because they constitute self-enforcing equilibria, but because they are supported by consciously-designed controls.60

The distinctive feature of the solidaristic approach is its emphasis on building organizational control capacity for individuals to “dissuade each other from free riding, or to assure of their intent to cooperate.”61 The third approach to voluntary cooperation in peasant communities, provided by Taylor, approaches the problem of cooperation through the concept of community. He defines a community as a social relation in which (1) its members have beliefs and values in common, (2) relations among members are direct and multifaceted, and (3) its members practice generalized as well as balanced reciprocity.62 Using social order as an example, Taylor argues that this public good could be provided by the voluntary cooperation of community members in the absence of the state or other forms of power hierarchy. A community can, because of its features, effectively utilize sanctions against those members who refuse to cooperate or those who want to free ride. Because community members practice balanced reciprocity and because their relationships are multifaceted, a noncooperative act would be met with withdrawal of reciprocal aid, ostracism, public ridicule and shaming, or even expulsion from the community.63 Knowing that noncooperative actions lead to such community sanctions, members have strong incentives to cooperate. Taylor argues that communal sanctions for noncooperation were especially pertinent in corporate peasant communities characterized by many-sided relationship and balanced reciprocity among members.64 In summary, although the public goods problem implies that peasant communal cooperative institutions should rarely emerge, they emerged nonetheless in many peasant communities from one of two different sources. One source is imposition either by conquerors or by overlords. The other source is voluntary cooperation by 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

Ibid., pp. 14–15. Ibid., p. 16. Michael Taylor, 1982, pp. 20–28. Ibid., pp. 81–87. Ibid., p. 88.

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community members, a rational strategy made possible by the features of intracommunity relationships in traditional peasant communities.

Origins of Cooperation and Communal Organizational Principles I argue here that the different sources of cooperative institutions in peasant communities have important organizational consequences. I specifically argue that the organizational principles of peasant communities based on different cooperative institutions vary along four dimensions: (1) organizational ideology, (2) organizational control, (3) decision making and the sources of elites, and (4) redistributive mechanisms. Organizational ideology. This is the shared perceptions of community members about the nature of their mutual relationships. Communities organized by voluntary and imposed cooperative institutions are likely to differ significantly in their organizational ideologies. Communities organized by voluntary cooperative institutions tend to promote an ideology of common group identity and interest among members to increase organizational cohesion in the absence of force. Specifically, communities try to create a strong consciousness of “us” among members as against “others” outside the community. This emphasis on group identity as a means to promote organizational cohesion is widely practiced in many communities that are based on voluntary cooperative institutions. These communities also develop extensive rituals to reinforce group consciousness among their members. As Wolf puts it, a ritual system “as a whole tends to define the boundaries of the community and acts as a rallying point and symbol of collective unity.”65 Magagna also observes that many communities used “community ritual as a focus of community solidarity.” These rituals “drew boundaries between insiders and outsiders” and “focused the consciousness of participants” on their group solidarity.66 In contrast to the organizational attempt to create an ideology of shared group identity and interest, communities organized by imposed institutions do not seek to promote a similar ideology. This is because these communities could survive organizationally without perceived shared identity and interest among members. Their cooperative institutions are created and maintained through coercive power. Organizational control. This refers to the efforts by organizations to make their members follow the rules and norms of organizations so as to maintain their proper functioning. In formal cooperative institutions, the goal of control is to maintain ongoing cooperation among members. Organizations practice a variety of measures 65. Eric R. Wolf, “Types of Latin American Peasantry: A Preliminary Discussion,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 57, No. 3 (1955), p. 458. 66. Magagna, 1991, p. 263.

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to ensure compliance with rules and norms by members. Amitai Etzioni identifies three types of measures for organizational control. The first is coercive power, which rests on the application or the threat of physical sanctions. The second is remunerative power, which is based on control over material resources, such as monetary payments, commodities, or services. The third is normative power, based on the manipulation of symbolic rewards such as esteem and acceptance.67 Since peasant communities organized by voluntary cooperative institutions are created by members with roughly equal powers, control by coercion is minimal. Instead, they have to rely on normative and remunerative powers to ensure compliance from members. Normative powers are achieved mainly through rituals. The rituals celebrate group belonging and seek to strengthen personal identification with the organization to make members’ compliance with rules automatic and voluntary. As David J. Kertzer observes, rituals “themselves provide social satisfactions to members, making identification with the organization more attractive.”68 Another major method of organizational control in communities based on voluntary cooperative institutions is remunerative power. These communities offer strong material incentives for members to follow rules of cooperation. This is achieved by the special rights and privileges granted to members. As Blum found, corporate communities in Europe defined clearly who were members and who were not. Only members enjoyed privileges such as access to common land, a vote in the village assembly, and the right of subsistence and help from the community. For those members who did not follow the rules of cooperation, the punishment would be expulsion from the community and thus loss of the special privileges carried with membership.69 In contrast, organizational control in communities with imposed cooperation relies primarily on coercion. The lord or external power authority uses political and sometimes military power to coordinate and enforce community cooperation. Very often the community organizational framework operates an internal police system to ensure rule compliance. Decision making and the sources of elites. These aspects of communal organizational principles differ in communities organized by voluntary and imposed cooperative institutions. Voluntary cooperative institutions, lacking of differentiation of power in their inception, have to rely on consensus and some kind of democratic procedure in decision making. The elites are selected either by merit or election. In contrast, decision making in imposed institutions is characterized by the dictatorial rule of the imposer, and elites are those who control power or wealth in communities. 67. Amitai Etzioni, A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations (New York: Free Press, 1975), pp. 12–13. 68. David J. Kertzer, “The Role of Ritual in Political Change,” in Myron J. Aronoff, ed., Culture and Political Change (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1983), p. 56. 69. Blum, 1971b, pp. 549–52.

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In European common-field villages, decisions were mostly made at village meetings or assemblies. The meetings were attended by all members of the community, although hired laborers, as outsiders, were excluded. In parts of England and France, there were even stipulations that everyone had to attend community meetings as part of their communal responsibility. Failure to do so could result in fines. Decisions were usually reached by either consensus or majority rule. In Swedish and Savoyard villages, a unanimous vote was required before any innovation could be introduced in the community.70 Officials of European peasant communities were either elected or selected according to their merits. As Reynolds observes, the free election of officials “was clearly valued.”71 According to Blum, “In many places the assembly elected the village officials, although in communities in Bohemia, Poland, Lower Austria, Russia and doubtless other lands, too, the nominees had to have the approval of the lord or his steward.”72 In contrast, in communities with enforced cooperation, decision making is a process entirely dominated and controlled by the elites. Power is exercised by the lord or external authority. Decisions reflect only the interests and wishes of those who control the community. Ordinary community members are excluded from any meaningful participation in managing community affairs. Redistributive mechanisms. This is the last organizational principle in which we can find significant variations between communities based on voluntary and imposed cooperative institutions. The redistributive mechanisms of a community can either promote equalization of wealth though leveling or the concentration of wealth through extractive measures by community elites. Communities based on voluntary cooperative institutions tend to exhibit egalitarian principles. They practice leveling in part to provide material incentives for less well-off members to stay in the organization and in part to minimize differences among members in order to consolidate community cohesion. Leveling may take the form of direct transfer of wealth through division of corporate property and community welfare systems. In corporate peasant communities in Central America, redistribution may furnish up to 30% of people’s annual food budget.73 In medieval Europe, the community also could serve as a leveler. This was especially true of those villages that practiced periodic redistribution of their lands to achieve formal equality in holdings. This practice was widely adopted in Russia and some other parts of

70. 71. 72. 73.

Ibid., pp. 554–55. See Reynolds, 1984, p. 133. Blum, 1971b, p. 556. See Ronald Dore, “Modern Cooperatives in Traditional Communities,” in Peter Worsley, ed., Two Blades of Grass: Rural Cooperatives in Agricultural Modernization (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971), p. 219.

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Europe. Moreover, to prevent the concentration of village land among a few families, many European communities forbade the acquisition of land by peasants who already had a specific amount.74 Communities may also achieve leveling through the destruction of surplus wealth. The purpose is to use shared poverty to reduce differentiation among members and to maintain community solidarity. According to Wolf ’s study of corporate communities in Central America and Java in Southeast Asia: In both areas, moreover, peasant communities maintain strong attitudes against accumulated wealth. . . . Display of wealth is viewed with direct hostility. In turn, poverty is praised and resignation in the face of poverty accorded high value. We have seen how much surplus wealth is destroyed or redistributed through participation in the communal religious cult. . . . The village community cannot easily tolerate economic differences but is apt to act as a leveler in this respect.75

In contrast to the leveling practices of communities based on voluntary cooperative institutions, redistribution mechanisms in communities with imposed cooperative institutions operate to concentrate wealth within communities. These communities, because they are organized through coercive force, do not see social and economic differences among members as a threat to organizational cohesion. Instead, the elites, who usually possess dictatorial powers in these communities, are likely to abuse their power to increase their own wealth through exploiting the rest of the community. They use the coercive power of the cooperative institution to extract wealth from the community.

Communal Organization and Agrarian Revolutions: A Proposition Different communal organizational principles define how peasants can influence their own community affairs through communal organizations and how they can benefit from these organizations. I argue that communal organizations following different organizational principles enjoy different legitimacy among peasants. Legitimate community organizations have open organizational processes, and their outcomes benefit most members of the community. Peasants perceive that the formal relational systems of their communities are fair and just in regulating and coordinating community affairs and collective action. These organizations are perceived as equitably defining members’ mutual relationships. Although community members may differ in wealth, their access to and benefits from their community organizations are at least formally equal. I argue here that communal organizational frameworks that originated from voluntary cooperation are likely to enjoy legitimacy among peasants.

74. For these leveling practices in European corporate communities, see Blum, 1971b, p. 570. 75. See Wolf, 1957, p. 5.

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Conversely, if the governing process of community organizations is closed to the majority of community members and if its outcomes benefit only a small part of the community, then the organization does not enjoy legitimacy among the majority of community members. This community organizational framework involves inequality or even repression and exploitation by those members who control community organizations. Communal organizational frameworks created through imposed cooperation are likely to be perceived as illegitimate by peasants. When conditions are favorable, peasants seek to reshape the structures and rules of this type of community organizational framework. If organizational rebellions occur simultaneously in many communities due to some larger favorable political situation, agrarian revolutions emerge. Restated, the central proposition of this study is that different communal organizational principles enjoy different legitimacy among peasants. It is illegitimate communal organizations that create dynamics for community-level social political changes. Agrarian revolutions arise when peasants attempt to overthrow illegitimate community organizational frameworks and establish new rules and institutions for community cooperation. In essence, agrarian revolutions are seen as attempted efforts at organizational change. The next three chapters examine whether formal cooperative institutions in Jiangxi and Hunan peasant communities followed different organizational principles, and if so, whether these principles shaped the different revolutionary patterns in the two provinces. I find that both provinces had strong and powerful communal cooperative institutions. However, they followed divergent organizational principles because of their different origins of cooperation. This in turn determined their particular tendencies for agrarian revolution in the early twentieth century.

4 Patrilineally Organized Jiangxi Peasant Communities

This chapter studies how the organizational response by Jiangxi rural communities to environmental challenges resulted in a distinctive, corporate lineage–centered communal organizational context. The following sections discuss how a frontier society in southern Jiangxi created an environment characterized by intense intercommunity competition over resources, the emergence of corporate lineages as the principal communal organizational form, the institutions and functions of corporate lineages, and class differentiation in lineage-based communities.

The Migration of Han Chinese to Southeastern China Widespread lineage organizations as the dominant rural organizational form in southern Jiangxi were the result of migration into a resource-poor frontier region. Chinese civilization was born in the Yellow River valley in Central China. The vast southern part of contemporary China was considered for a long time a barbarian region. It was populated by dozens of non-Chinese minorities. The most prominent include Nan Man, Li, and Bai Yue.1 However, driven by dynastic changes, wars, and foreign invasions, the ethnic Han Chinese living in Central China were forced to expand into the unfamiliar and harsh southern barbarian region. In this process of Han Chinese migration to the South, the most important wave was the migration of ethnic Chinese, called Hakkas, into the present tri-border region of southern Jiangxi, northeastern Guangdong, and southwestern Fujian. Hakka literally translates to “guest people,” the term used by local inhabitants to describe the incoming Chinese. Historian Luo Xianglin traces the Hakka migration process and divides it into five periods.2 The first period began in AD 317 when northern nomad minorities invaded Central China and forced the Jin court to flee 1. 2.

See Luo Xianglin, A Guide for Research on Hakkas (Guangzhou: Xishan shucang, 1933), p. 79. For more discussion on Hakka migration, see Chen Yundong, Hakkas (Taipei: Lianya, 1979); James Lee, “Migration and Expansion in Chinese History,” in William H. McNeill and Ruth S. Adams, eds., Human Migration: Patterns and Policies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978).

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southward. Large numbers of ethnic Chinese also migrated through the current Anhui and Henan Provinces into the Gan River valley of Jiangxi and settled into central Jiangxi.3 The second period started in the late Tang era, when the massive Huang Chao peasant rebellion disrupted the peace in Central China. Again, wars and the breakdown of the state forced Hakka Chinese residing in central Jiangxi along the Gan River to flee farther south to the tri-border region.4 This region, in the opinion of experts, began to emerge as the core region of Hakka Chinese. This period is also considered the “incubation period” of Hakkas as a subethnic group with a distinctive subculture.5 The third period of Hakka migration began when the Song dynasty was invaded by the Mongols. The Song court fled across the Yangtze River and brought with it more Chinese from Central China. The Hakka Chinese in the southern Jiangxi core region during the process also expanded further southward into the north and east of the present-day Guangdong Province.6 The fourth period of Hakka migration occurred during early Qing. According to Luo Xianglin, this wave of migration was caused primarily by internal population growth of the Hakkas. After several hundred years of relatively peaceful development, the Hakka population at the tri-border region increased dramatically. The region was ecologically poor and hilly; hence it was unable to support the population growth. At  the same time, peasant rebellions in Sichuan Province in West China resulted in the decimation of large portions of its population. Under the sponsorship of the Qing government, many Hakkas moved to Sichuan. However, at the same time others migrated eastward through Fujian and across the sea to present-day Taiwan.7 The fifth period started during mid-Qing. The population growth of the Hakkas again forced those already living in northern Guangdong to migrate farther southward to the coastal regions of Guangdong. They settled in the areas around what are now Guangzhou and Hong Kong.8 These five major periods of population migration in the region show that dynastic changes, wars, and foreign invasions in Central and North China resulted in a continuous migration process into southern undeveloped regions. The Jiangxi revolution of the 1930s took place almost exactly in this Hakka core region of southeastern 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

Luo Xianglin, 1933, p. 41. Ibid., p. 46. For discussion of this “incubation period” of Hakka subculture, see Myron Cohen, “The Hakka or ‘Guest People’: Dialects as a Sociocultural Variable in Southeastern China,” Ethnohistory, Vol. 15, No.  3 (1968), p. 244; Yang Xisong, “A Discussion on the Origins of Hakkas and Southern Fujian People,” Kejia zazhi, No. 11 (1990), p. 10. Luo Xianglin, 1933, p. 51. Ibid., pp. 59–61. Ibid., pp. 62–63.

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Jiangxi, southwestern Fujian, and northeastern Guangdong, though it was limited to southeastern Jiangxi and southwestern Fujian. As Luo Xianglin in the 1930s and Yan Sen in the 1980s found, almost all counties in southern Jiangxi and southwestern Fujian that constituted the Jiangxi Soviet Republic are pure Hakka counties. They include Xunwu, Anyuan, Xinfeng, Xingguo, Yundu, Huichang, Ningdu, Shicheng, Ruijin, Guangchang, and Yongfeng in southern Jiangxi, and Changting, Shanghang, Wuping, and Yongding in southwestern Fujian.9 Besides the major migrations by Hakkas in the region, there were also many smaller migrations within the southeastern region of China during the Qing dynasty. The most prominent was that of the “shed people,” who populated the mountains along the borders between Jiangxi and Guangdong and between Jiangxi and Fujian. “Shed people” refers to migrants who lived in simple huts up in the mountains. According to Stephen C. Averill, from the early Qing period, there were migrations of people, many of whom were Hakkas, from inland Fujian and Guangdong into the mountainous areas of southern Jiangxi that became known as the “strongholds of shed people activity.”10 These often sporadic and small-scale migrations from inland Fujian and Guangdong to the mountains of southern Jiangxi were the result of demographic pressures. The limited land resources of the two provinces were increasingly inadequate to support the population growth. Guo Songyi’s research found that in 1766, while Jiangxi had an average of 4 mu of agricultural land per person, Fujian only had 1.8 mu, the second lowest in China.11 Thus, “shed people were mostly poor peasants migrating from other regions, but the largest groups were from Fujian and Guangdong.”12 According to Zhuang Jifa, because the southern mountains of Jiangxi were rich in tea, fruits, and other cash crops like indigo, many landless Guangdong peasants poured into these mountains and settled in simple sheds.13 A report by Jiangxi officials in 1731 found that southern counties such as Wuning, Wanzai, Yongxin, Shangrao, and Yongfeng were populated mostly by shed people.14

9.

10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

For more information on geographical distributions of pure Hakka counties in southeastern China, see Luo Xianglin, 1933, p. 94; also see Yan Sen, “The Tones of Jiangxi Dialects,” Jiangxi shifan daxue xuebao, No. 3 (1988), p. 44. See Stephen C. Averill, “The Shed People and the Opening of the Yangtze Highland,” Modern China, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1983), p. 84. See Guo Songyi, “An Analysis of the Reclamation Policy of the Feudal State in Early Qing,” Qingshi luncong, Vol. 2 (1984), p. 105. Ibid., p. 120. See Zhuang Jifa, “Migration and the Development of Secret Societies in Fujian and Guangdong during Qing,” in Institute of Modern History, ed., Papers from the Conference on Early Modern China (Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1989), p. 760. These reports by Qing officials are quoted in ibid.

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Other Qing documents in Jiangxi reported the invasion by shed people from Fujian. The counties bordering Fujian had the most severe problem. In Ruijin County, “people from the Zhangzhou and Quanzhou regions of Fujian poured in by large groups,” and, in many mountains of Xingguo County, “drifting migrants began to surpass the number of native residents.”15 In sum, the tri-border region of southern Jiangxi, southwestern Fujian, and northeastern Guangdong was characterized by constant population migration. The earlier movements were caused by large and traumatic historical events like wars and foreign invasions that pushed ethnic Chinese from Central China into the region. The later population migrations were the result of demographic change in the region. These pushed some Hakkas further southward into the coastal regions of Guangdong and eastward to Taiwan through Fujian. However, at the same time, the activities of the shed people also pushed large numbers of poor landless peasants of Guangdong and Fujian back to the mountains in southern Jiangxi.

An Environment Characterized by Intercommunity Competition The Hakka core region, together with greater Southeast China, which comprises Fujian, Taiwan, and Guangdong, is characterized by constant intercommunity competition for survival and development. This was caused by the unique ecological and social environments of the region. Even though in the eyes of the Chinese the vast south used to be a barbaric place with very harsh living conditions, by the Qing period, after centuries of population migration, the southeastern part of China began to experience severe ecological pressures due to demographic changes. As Luo Xianglin observes in his classic study of Hakka migration, the last two waves were caused by internal population growth of Hakkas residing in the core region. Hakkas were forced to move farther eastward to Fujian coastal regions and from there to Taiwan, and further southward to the coastal regions of Guangdong. However, it was not long before these regions began to experience their own demographic pressures. The activities of shed people were efforts by the people in Guangdong and Fujian to move back to the mountain areas of the old Hakka core region. The southeastern part of China during the Qing suffered some of the most severe ecological pressures. The southeastern region, except its coastal parts, is hilly. As  Yu  Qing observes, since Hakkas were forced by wars to migrate from Central China, this historical experience influenced their later settling pattern. They chose to

15. These remarks were recorded originally in Ruijin County Gazetteer and Xingguo County Gazetteer. All were quoted in Guo Songyi, 1984, p. 120.

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settle in the hilly areas of the tri-border region because they were militarily defensible. However, a negative consequence was that they lacked land for agricultural use. Land suitable for agricultural purposes was limited and grossly inadequate for the quickly growing Hakka population.16 Luo Ergang’s 1937 study of ecological pressures in mid-Qing shows the severe problem facing the region. In his study of agricultural land holdings per person in twenty provinces in 1812, Fujian was the second lowest with only 0.93 mu per person. Guangdong ranked the fourth lowest with 1.67 mu per person.17 According to Luo, because of land productivity differences, 4 mu per person in the North and 2 mu in the South were required to subsist. The southeastern part of China clearly faced grave ecological pressure.18 The ecological pressures and limited natural resources in the region were greatly aggravated by constant migration. The problem was that migrants to the area would inevitably ask for a share of the local resources. Since the region had only very limited production resources such as land and water, the new claims by migrants to resources naturally led to conflicts and competition between existing communities and new communities of migrants. This problem of intercommunity competition caused by constant migration in a resource-poor region became the dominant feature of southeastern China. Cohen’s study traces the history of conflicts between Hakkas and local communities in Guangdong. The local Cantonese-speaking communities, called puntis (local people), mobilized to defend their interests in the face of the encroaching Hakkas.19 Initially, Hakkas lived on the outskirts of punti villages, usually on the hillside, and worked either as tenants of puntis or cultivated poor lands. Moreover, Hakkas lived dispersed among puntis.20 However, Cohen found that Hakkas gradually consolidated their positions in the area dominated by puntis by residing in groups, for they had to hang together to check the exploitation of puntis. As tensions with both punti landlords and tenants rose, puntis and Hakkas gradually began to live in separate villages to facilitate easy mobilization. Moreover, Hakkas began to systematically take over punti villages. As a foreign observer noted of the changeover from Cantonese to Hakka occupancy of villages: “Soon after the appearance of a Hakka house inside the walls of a punti village, the puntis disappeared completely.”21

16. For this discussion on the settling patterns of Hakkas and perennial land shortages, see Yu Qing, Hakkas Searching for Their Roots (Taipei: Wuling, 1988), p. 54. 17. For this data, see Luo Ergang, “Population Pressure before the Taiping Revolution,” Zhongguo shehui jingji shi jikan, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1937), p. 42. 18. Ibid., p. 20. 19. Cohen, 1968, p. 248. 20. Ibid., pp. 253–54. 21. Quoted in ibid., p. 267.

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With the creation of separate punti and Hakka communities, large-scale battles broke out in Guangdong in the nineteenth century. By 1860, the fighting was so severe that, according to one foreigner, “there were shipments of arms and even the dispatch of armed steamers from Hong Kong to assist one or other of the belligerent parties.”22 The fighting was so pervasive and intense that the Qing government had to dispatch imperial troops to stop the organized violence and to resettle Hakkas. The governor of Guangdong had to set aside certain regions for Hakka settlement. Cantonese were ordered to give up their lands to Hakkas, in return receiving vacated Hakka farms.23 Luo Xianglin estimated that organized violence between Hakkas and puntis resulted in about 500,000 dead, wounded, and missing.24 However, conflicts between native and migrant communities were not confined to Hakkas. The shed people in new communities in the hills also competed with existing local communities on the plains and in valley areas. As Averill documents in his study of shed people in southern Jiangxi, the dominant attitude of the local communities and of the majority of Qing officials toward the shed people “can only be characterized as one of antagonism.” Although most shed people worked either as tenants for local landlords or on the mountains, their relations with the local population were marked by conflicts. Their primitive forms of agriculture quickly exhausted the soil and often caused severe erosion problems. Some of the shed people were alleged to turn to banditry, threatening the property and order of local communities.25 Liu Min’s study of shed people in southern Jiangxi shows that to control the conflicts between the local communities and communities of shed people, the Qing government adopted a policy of segregation. They ordered shed people and local people to enter into separate population registration systems, and they had to live in separate communities.26 The Qing government established separate quotas in imperial exams for shed people to minimize conflicts with local communities. Mao Tse-tung noted that even in the early Republican era of the twentieth century the conflicts between the two sides in southern Jiangxi were still very intense. He found that in the southern border regions, there existed “very deep division” between local populations and migrants. According to Mao, migrants occupied hilly areas and were suppressed by local populations who controlled the plains.27 In Fujian, the grave ecological problem and scarce resources also resulted in widespread intercommunity competition. The Communist army found that even in the 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

Quoted in ibid., p. 278. For these figures, see Luo Xianglin, 1933, p. 62. Ibid., p. 3. See Averill, 1983, pp. 99–100. See Liu Min, “Household Registration for the Shed People during Qing,” Zhongguo shehui jingji shi yanjiu, No. 1 (1983), p. 24. 27. Mao Tse-tung, 1928, “A Report by the Jinggangshan Party Committee to the Party Center,” in Collected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Tokyo: Hokubosha, 1972).

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1940s it was very common to employ community-organized violence to control land and water rights. As one report by the Land Commission of the Eastern Military and Administrative Committee noted, “Whenever new lands were found, they could not be claimed by any village or lineage in a peaceful way, but through intense confrontations among them. . . . If both sides had rough parity in powers, then armed feud would break out.”28 A Qing magistrate of Pinghe County in southern Fujian observed that intense intercommunity conflicts created a situation of well-defined geographic spheres of interests among communities: “People utilized mountains and rivers as natural defense positions. Each clan is a fortress and every individual is a soldier. People of the same surnames lived in separate and well-defined boundaries. They had generations of competition with and hatred for each other.”29 Widespread and armed intercommunity conflicts, especially in pure Hakka counties in western Fujian, resulted in a unique pattern of residence: large fortresses that served both as living and fighting facilities for an entire community. Yang Guozhen and Chen Zhiping’s research during the 1980s reveals that, especially in the Hakka counties of Yongding, Shanghang, and Longyan, it was a common practice for an entire community to build and live permanently in a round, multistory fortress to defend against attacks from other communities.30 Interestingly, these fortresses today are still the homes of some Hakka communities in Fujian. Pervasive intercommunity conflicts, therefore, characterized southeastern China. Conflicts were the result of demographic change and constant population movement in a resource-poor region. This problem, however, was further intensified by the political environment of the region, which had long been a lawless frontier with weak state authority. Thus, as Zhuang Jifa observes, this region was a “migration-development society” with weak law and order.31 Not only was the region far away from the national power center in Beijing, it was also situated in a mountainous setting that inhibited effective communication with and supervision by state authorities who were located in cities and counties. In this frontier society, communities had to survive as if in a state of nature. Conflicts among them could not be settled by strong and speedy state interventions. Rather, they had to be settled by the communities themselves. Therefore, frequent and large-scale armed feuds became the major means through which communities took the law into their own hands. Feuds in this region were particularly notorious

28. These Communist documents were quoted in Yang Guozhen and Chen Zhiping, “Fortresses in Fujian during Ming and Qing,” Zhongguo shehui jingji shi yanjiu, No. 2 (1985), p. 52. 29. These comments by the magistrate of Pinghe County were also quoted in ibid., p. 55. 30. For more discussion on the fortresses in Fujian, see ibid.; Wei Jiaxiong, “Folk Traditions of Fujian and Taiwan during Ming and Qing,” Zhongguo shi yanjiu, No. 3 (1990), p. 123. 31. See Zhuang Jifa, 1986.

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during the Qing period. The Qing court frequently expressed its grave dissatisfaction with the widespread armed feuds in Jiangxi, Fujian, and Guangdong. For example, Emperor Yongzheng in 1734 commented, “I heard that the Zhangzhou and Chuanzhou regions in Fujian had strong traditions of fierce fighting. These big clans with large numbers often exploit the weak and solitary. Armed feuds often broke out over small incidents.”32 Emperor Qianlong personally ordered Fujian officials to take resolute measures to stop widespread armed feuds in the regions.33 In his study of armed feuds among communities in southeastern China, Harry Lamley notes that this phenomenon was both the result of scarce resources and an expanding population, on the one hand, and weak state authority, on the other. In his account, in the Chaozhou Prefecture, Qing officials usually hesitated to enter localities where armed feuds were rife.34 In this environment of weak state authority, communities often built tall walls for military purposes. This phenomenon was not found in any other rural areas in China. As one British traveler found in the mid-nineteenth century in the Chaozhou region, “All the neighboring counties were in a state of anarchy; the villages, towns, and hamlets were all walled, and each seemed prepared to fight with its neighbors. There were villages, certainly not a quarter of a mile from each other, both surrounded with distinct walls about sixteen to twenty feet high.”35 As discussed in the previous chapter, peasant communities often built cooperative institutions to respond to environmental challenges. It was natural that the unique social environments of southeastern China would result in some kinds of communal organizational response. The next section discusses how the communities in this region responded organizationally to their environments.

A Lineage-Centered Communal Organizational Framework British anthropologist Maurice Freedman first found that the dominant communal organizational form in southeastern China was strong corporate lineages. His pioneering book, Lineage Organization in Southeast China (1958), and its follow-up, Chinese Lineage and Society (1966), laid the foundation for later research on the subject. According to James L. Watson, a lineage is “a corporate group which celebrates ritual and is based on demonstrated descent from a common ancestor.” A lineage 32. These comments by Emperor Yongzheng were quoted in Wei Jiaxiong, 1990, p. 115. 33. See Wang Sizhi, “An Analysis of the Lineage System,” Qingshi luncong, Vol. 4 (1982), p. 176. 34. See Harry J. Lamley, “Lineage Feuding in Southeastern Fujian and Eastern Guangdong under Qing Rule,” in Jonathan N. Lipman and Stevan Harrell, eds., Violence in China: Essays in Culture and Counterculture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), pp. 37–38. 35. This observation was quoted in Maurice Freedman, Lineage Organization in Southeastern China (London: Athlone Press, 1958), p. 8.

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“is a corporation in the sense that members derive benefits from joint-owned properties and shared resources; they also join in corporate activities on a regular basis. Furthermore, members of a lineage are highly conscious of themselves as a group in relation to others, whom they define as outsiders.”36 A later study by Patricia B. Ebrey and James L. Watson further pinpoints the basic feature of lineages: “a diagnostic feature of lineage (as opposed to other descent groups) is that a lineage has ownership of collective assets vested in the group or segments of the group.”37 Lineage is a more restrictive concept than descent groups or surname groups. According to Ebrey and Watson, descent group “refers to groups of agnates, defined by descent from a common ancestor. Its members are aware of their kinship, but corporate behaviors may be limited to activities such as ancestral rites or compilation of genealogies.”38 Surname group refers to “any group or category of people who are united solely on the basis of shared surname and very distant presumed kinship.”39 Lineage, therefore, is the most restrictive concept among the three and is organizationally the most elaborate and institutionalized. Even though Freedman’s study focuses primarily on Fujian and Guangdong, the Hakka core region in southern Jiangxi, southwestern Fujian, and northeastern Guangdong was also dominated by corporate lineages. From this region Hakkas later expanded into other regions in Fujian and Guangdong. As Mao Tse-tung found in 1928 in southern Jiangxi, “No matter in which county, feudal lineage organizations are extremely widespread. Usually, villages are single surname villages, or several villages have one surname.”40 This lineage-dominated communal organizational form in southeastern China distinguished itself from the rest of China. However, how do we explain this unique community organizational form in the region? I argue that this was the result of organizational adaptation by peasant communities in the region to their distinctive environments. As discussed in the previous section, southeastern China was characterized by constant intercommunity competition in a resource-poor ecological setting. The problem was intensified by the weak state authority in a frontier society. Lineages emerged in communities of the region as a result of communal organizational adaptation to the environmental challenges. Freedman, while hypothesizing a number of causes for the strong corporate lineages in the region, primarily emphasizes its lawless frontier environment. In addition to the cooperative effort necessary to bring wild land under cultivation, there was also a need for organized defense: 36. For this definition of lineages, see James L. Watson, “Chinese Kinship Reconsidered: Anthropological Perspectives on Historical Research,” China Quarterly, No. 92 (1982), p. 594. 37. See Patricia B. Ebrey and James L. Watson, eds., Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China, 1000– 1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 5. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Mao, 1928.

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Revolutions as Organizational Change When settlement took place in rough frontier conditions, single lineage communities were likely to develop fairly quickly and when, in contrast, people moved into areas under firm government control, any initial agnatic heterogeneity in the incoming groups was probably perpetuated.41

Jack M. Potter’s study of lineage-centered communities in Southeast China also notes the role of the lawless frontier setting: “In such weakly controlled area, conditions often approached a state of near anarchy, and strong lineages were one method of mutual protection and self-help. The lineages would take on important legal, political, and military functions.”42 As Potter continues, “In the great southward migration Chinese agriculturalists moved into areas inhabited by non-Han minority people, establishing themselves mainly by force as enclaves within hostile population.” Thus, “under frontier conditions, strongly organized and highly integrated lineages were almost essential for continued survival.”43 Early large-scale migration to the region might have provided the necessary initial organizational means to create lineages. The early Hakka southward movement was driven by large, catastrophic historical events, such as wars, foreign invasions, and rebellions. Thus, earlier Hakka movement tended to involve large-group migration, such as parts of or an entire village.44 This pattern organizationally facilitated the initial creation of lineages. Since some villages in Central China were already populated by surname groups, it was easy for these so far only loosely connected surname groups to develop into more institutionalized corporate lineages when they tried to survive in harsh and hostile new environments. Even if village members who migrated together were not related in any way, longtime acquaintance and prior common residence also helped crystalize them into highly structured groups in the new environment. Numerous scholars have noted that many genealogies in southeastern China are fabricated. As David Faure observes in his study of lineages in Guangdong, “Whether the genealogical linkage claimed is real or fictitious is beside the point from the people of lineage organization: it matters only that members of the lineage are prepared to accept the linkage as real.”45 In anthropological terms, this process of lineage formation, whether strengthening an existing surname group or uniting people with no linkages at all, occurs through fusion rather than through the segmentation used in lineages with a real common 41. Maurice Freedman, Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung (London: Athlone Press, 1966), p. 164. 42. Jack M. Potter, “Land and Lineage in Traditional China,” in Maurice Freedman, ed., Family and Kinship in Chinese Society (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1970), p. 135. 43. Ibid., p. 136. 44. Burton Pasternak, “The Role of the Frontier in Chinese Lineage Development,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3 (1969), pp. 553–54. 45. David Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society: Lineage and Village in Eastern New Territories, Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 2.

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ancestor. In the case of fusion, lineages “tend to assume the guise of an organization based on descent from a single ancestor.” The way to achieve this is the compilation of fake genealogies.46 This process of lineage formation, facilitated by the historical processes of early migration, in turn generated strong dynamics for the creation of lineages by other communities. If some communities organized themselves through lineage institutions, unorganized and weak communities had to respond by creating their own lineages. Averill’s study of shed people in southern Jiangxi found that since they faced already organized local communities, lineages were organized through fictive kinship. They were formed by people who came originally from different places and may not have been related at all, “except through lines of descent artificially contrived to meet at some common ancestor.” According to Averill, “Whatever the defects from a genealogical perspective, these lineages were useful for providing an organizational principle—fictive kinship—around which large numbers of people could be gathered in a short time to defend their economic and political interests.”47 Zhuang Jifa’s research on lineage organization in Fujian also demonstrates how, as organizational responses to existing powerful lineages, weak communities and small surname groups had to organize into large, artificially created lineages to compete. He found that both in late Ming and early Qing it became common for small groups to unite to counter large lineages that exploited them. The lineages created through this fusion process often deliberately chose a common surname that expressed their purpose of unity. These artificially created surnames included, for example, Tong (togetherness), Qi (united), Bao (encompassing), and Hai (universal).48 The dynamics of large-scale migration and demographic change in a resourcepoor region caused the emergence of strong lineages in southeastern China. Not only were early large-scale migration patterns conducive to the creation of early lineages in the region, but these in turn forced other communities to adopt the same organizational response. A lawless frontier environment sharpened the structural problem of intercommunity competition for survival and further contributed to lineage formation. In this context, lineage organizations were institutionally more stable compared with other non-kin-based organizational forms. Non-kin-based associational organizations were inherently unstable. Either they could not retain members for long, or they faced the classic collective action problem. In contrast, lineage organizations minimized institutional instability. Because of real or fictive blood ties, members had a clear sense of belonging. As Watson observes, lineage members were “highly

46. For more discussion on lineage formation through the fusion process, see James Watson, 1982, p. 604. 47. Averill, 1983, p. 105. 48. For the fusion type of formation of these artificial lineages in Fujian, see Zhuang Jifa, 1989, p. 738.

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conscious of themselves as a group.”49 As the next section will show, frequent rituals of ancestral worship had a central place in the institutional process of lineages. They served to constantly reinforce members’ consciousness of common identity. Moreover, lineage organizations also had concrete resources to maintain the organization and its membership. As will be explored in greater detail in the next section, common property, usually land, offered material interests to individual members. Members thus had strong incentives to stay in the organization. How do we assess the thesis of organizational response to a frontier society? Freedman also points out a possible correlation between lineages and the economic system of the region, the rice economy. He attributes lineage formation to the cooperative nature of the rice-growing enterprise. The irrigation necessary for rice economy required communities to use certain organizational mechanisms for the task.50 This hypothesis, however, cannot explain why only this region had strong corporate lineages since many other regions in China also had rice economies. In fact, the lower Yangtze River region in central-eastern China had a more advanced and extensive rice economy. However, this region did not have strong corporate lineages. The middle-southern region of China, such as Hunan and Hubei, also had rice economies but did not have strong corporate lineages. Potter provides an alternative, economically based hypothesis in addition to his frontier thesis. He argues that lineages needed capital to create corporate property. Thus, only the highly productive rice regions in the South could do this.51 However, even though this hypothesis explains well why strong corporate lineages were found only in South China, it cannot explain the differences among regions in the South. Again, only southeastern China had strong corporate lineages. The lower Yangtze River region was traditionally more developed and richer than the southeastern region but did not have strong lineages.

The Institutions and Functions of Lineage-Centered Communities This section discusses the key institutions and functions of lineage organizations in southeastern China. They include rituals, corporate properties, leadership and decision making, and social-welfare functions. Ritual Practice An important part of lineage life was centered on regular ancestral worship. Since lineage was based on common descent, the cult of the ancestor was paramount in 49. James Watson, 1982, p. 594. 50. For more discussion on the impact of rice economy on lineage formation, see Freedman, 1966, p. 160. 51. Potter, 1970, pp. 132–33.

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maintaining the organization. In Potter’s words, the ancestral cult was the worldview of lineage members.52 As Watson notes, the fact that a lineage celebrates ritual unity implies “that members of a lineage are conscious in and of themselves as a group. It follows, therefore, that a lineage cannot exist unless its members gather periodically, at a grave or a hall, to celebrate rites of unity.”53 Ancestral cult rituals were frequently and regularly held by almost all lineages in southeastern China to periodically revive and reinforce the group consciousness of common belonging. As British anthropologist Hugh D. R. Baker points out, “The Chinese lineage is founded in both kinship and ritual.”54 Usually, members of a lineage participate in the rites led by lineage elders. The process was solemn and highly elaborate. In many lineages in southeastern China, the expense of ancestral worship consumed a large portion of the lineage incomes from their corporate properties. Apart from their rather solemn parts, rites were usually followed by a feast of the entire lineage. Even though this part of the ritual stood in sharp contrast to the sacred nature of ancestral worship, its function was the same. The wild drinking and eating by all members promoted a sense of brotherhood and equality.55 As Deng He concludes in his study, through worship and feasting, “lineage members not only experienced the greatness of the organization but also the happiness of brotherhood.”56 Corporate Land As Watson points out, one of the defining features of lineage was the existence of jointly owned property, which usually took the form of corporate land. This institution was imperative because it determined the ability of a lineage to survive as an organization. Whether a lineage can organizationally survive depends on its ability to hold its members together. Common land provided the most important material base for this purpose. According to Potter, “Collectively owned land in the form of ancestral estates is a sine qua non for the development of strong lineage organization in China.”57 Besides financing the building of ancestral halls and supporting ancestral worship, the most important role of corporate land was to retain lineage members for economic 52. Sulamith H. Potter and Jack M. Potter, China’s Peasants: The Anthropology of a Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 23. 53. James Watson, 1982, p. 597. 54. Hugh D. R. Baker, A Chinese Lineage Village: Sheung Shui (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968), p. 71. 55. For more discussion on the ritual of lineage feasts, see Rubie S. Watson, Inequality among Brothers: Class and Kinship in South China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 56. Deng He, “The Internal Structure of Lineages in Modern China,” Shanxi daxue xuebao, No. 2 (1991), p. 40. 57. Potter, 1970, p. 127.

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reasons and thus promote lineage solidarity. One way of economically retaining members was to provide personal income for lineage members from the division of surplus income from common property. Even after the ritual expense, the lineage often had a surplus from the rent of its corporate land, and it could be dispensed to lineage members either directly or through various social welfare benefits. As Chen Han-sheng found in Guangdong in the 1930s, “Sometimes the income from the rent is distributed among the member families according to the number of individuals, and sometimes according to the number of sub-families.”58 For the lineages in the New Territories of Hong Kong, “the income left over after paying for taxes and the ancestral sacrifices is divided equally among the male members of the group.”59 As Potter notes, lineage members therefore “have such a strong economic interest in remaining with the group that only a few would permanently leave their lineage.”60 Another way to attract lineage members economically was through the right to use the land. As Freedman notes: When the landlord was often the agnatic group of which the tenant was a member, and when being a member of such a group meant having a prior right to tenancy, the poorer people had every reason to stay in the community rather than go to try their luck elsewhere.61

Because of its central importance to maintaining the lineage as an organization, corporate land constituted a large portion in the total agricultural land in southeastern China before 1949. In most communities corporate land usually ranged around 30% or higher. In his classic 1936 study of Guangdong, Chen Han-sheng found that, based on the lowest estimate, no less than 35% of the land in the province was corporate land.62 Later studies in the 1960s in the New Territories of Hong Kong, which formerly belonged to Guangdong, showed that corporate land still constituted an important share of the economic activities of lineages. For example, Baker’s study of one Hakka lineage found that 52% of its land was corporate.63 Rubie Watson’s study of another lineage found that 44% of its land was corporate property.64 And the corporate land of a lineage studied by Potter constituted 93% of its total agricultural land.65 58. See Chen Han-sheng, Landlord and Peasant in China: A Study of the Agrarian Crisis in South China (New York: International, 1936), p. 30. 59. Jack M. Potter, Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), p. 61. 60. Potter, 1970, p. 129. For more discussion on the roles of corporate land in the maintenance of lineage organizations, see Deng He, 1991, p. 42. 61. Freedman, 1958, p. 127. 62. Chen Han-sheng, 1936, p. 35. 63. Baker, 1968, p. 171. 64. Rubie Watson, 1985, p. 68. 65. Potter, 1968.

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In Fujian, corporate land constituted perhaps an even larger share of agricultural land. Communist land reform documents revealed that in the 1940s corporate land in northern Fujian averaged 58.32%, in eastern Fujian 49.53%, in northwestern Fujian 66.92%, in southern Fujian 44%, and in central Fujian 48.92%.66 In core areas of the Jiangxi revolution, no systematic data is available. However, Communist documents do contain some information about the importance of corporate land in local economies. For example, Mao Tse-tung’s investigation in Xunwu County in southern Jiangxi found that 40% of its land was lineage owned.67 A report by the Party Committee of Changting County identified 33% of its land as corporate controlled.68 Another party document showed that in Gonglue County land controlled by landlords and ancestral estates respectively produced 150,000 and 220,000 shi of grain, meaning the latter possessed more land than the former.69 Corporate land was usually managed by one of two methods. In the first, the lineage leased the land to another lineage. A lineage thus became a corporate landlord.70 This practice was found both in Guangdong and in Fujian. Another method was to lease the land to individual tenants who could be lineage members or outsiders. However, lineage members often had priority in tenancies and received better lease terms.71 But these practices were not universal. Corporate land was property jointly owned by all members of a lineage. Usually it could not be sold. Even when it could be sold unanimous consent of members was required. These were safety measures to ensure the continuity of corporate property and thus the continuity of the organization itself.72 Social Welfare Services of Lineage As Watson observes on the economic roles of lineages in southeastern China: 66. These statistics from the CCP land reform documents were quoted in Zheng Zhenman, “The Development of Corporate Landlordism in Northern Fujian during Ming and Qing,” in Fu Yiling and Yang Guozhen, eds., Fujian’s Society and Rural Economy during Ming and Qing (Xiamen: Xiamen University Press, 1987b), pp. 126–27. 67. See Mao Tse-tung, Report from Xunwu, trans. Roger R. Thompson (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990). 68. These statistics on corporate land in Changting County were from CCP Changting County Party Committee, 1930, “A Work Report by the Changting County Party Committee,” Zhongyang geming genjudi shiliao xuanbian (ZGGSX), Vol. 1, p. 287. 69. CCP Jiangxi Soviet Area Provincial Party Committee, 1932, “A Work Summary by the Jiangxi Soviet Area Provincial Party Committee,” ZGGSX, Vol. 1, p. 459. 70. For corporate landlordism, see James L. Watson, “Hereditary Tenancy and Corporate Landlordism in Traditional China: A Case Study,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1977), p. 170; also see Potter, 1968, p. 100. 71. Potter, 1968, p. 113; also see Freedman, 1958, p. 13. 72. For this discussion of the mechanisms used in preserving lineage corporate property, see Potter, 1968, p. 111.

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Revolutions as Organizational Change The ideology of common descent is a powerful organizing principle in Chinese society but this in itself is not enough to hold members of a lineage together, in the same community, generation after generation. As shareholders in a corporation, members expect to receive some benefits, material or otherwise, from their collective holdings. In most cases benefits derived from the surplus income of ancestral estates, which is either reinvested by the managers or shared out in annual dividends.73

Thus besides the common land that offered direct material inducements, for members to stay in the organization, lineage also performed a variety of welfare services. These included lineage schools for the education of all lineage children, charities to support the elderly and widowed, and expenses for the burial of the dead. As Chen Han-sheng discovered in the local chronicle of Mei County, a Hakka area in northern Guangdong, of the social welfare functions of lineages in the nineteenth century: It has been a long and well-established tradition to maintain Tai-fien or the clan land for ancestral worship. The annual income thereof, besides defraying the expenditure for worship, has a threefold use. Those families sending their boys to the ancestral temple to study may receive a regular stipend; also scholars in the clan who have been admitted to the public ceremony of worshiping Confucius may receive an annual subsidy; and those scholars who are to participate in the civil service examinations either in the provincial or in the national capital, may have their travel expenses partially or entirely paid from the clan fund. . . . The finance of the clan does not confine itself to education. All the elders who are above sixty years of age receive an annual grant of rice and, on every occasion of ancestral worship, a certain amount of meat. Some of the very poor or permanently disabled members of the clan also enjoy such an annual grant. Some financial assistance is given, too, to those clan members who cannot meet the expense of the wedding or funeral. Whenever a famine occurs, relief is offered from the clan treasury.74

According to many studies, these social welfare functions were still performed by lineages in the 1960s in the New Territories of Hong Kong.75 In the powerful corporate lineages in Fujian, social welfare services were also an integral part of the functions of lineages.76 Communist documents on the southern Jiangxi revolution complained about how the social welfare functions of lineages impeded the revolutionary process.

73. 74. 75. 76.

James Watson, 1982, p. 600. Chen Han-sheng, 1936, p. 27. See James Watson, 1977, p. 168. For discussions on social welfare services provided by lineages in Fujian, see Yang Guozhen and Chen  Zhiping, “More on the Fortresses in Fujian during Ming and Qing,” in Fu Yiling and Yang  Guozhen, eds., Fujian’s Society and Rural Economy during Ming and Qing (Xiamen: Xiamen University Press, 1987); and Wang Rigen, “The Development and Social Origins of Corporate Land of Fujian Lineages during Ming and Qing,” Zhongguo shehui jingji shi yanjiu, No. 2 (1990).

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For example, as reported in one CCP document, lineages “gave some of their income to the poor members and subsidized education of lineage children. As a result, peasants’ lineage consciousness is especially strong, and they compromised with the landlords and rich peasants of the same lineage.”77 Leadership and Decision Making in Lineage-Based Communities Lineage leadership was also unique in that it was the elders who formally controlled lineage affairs. As Chen Han-sheng found in Guangdong in the 1930s, “As a rule, the clan head is the oldest man of the clan, and the clan chief or clan trustee is selected from among the oldest generation living.”78 C. K. Yang’s study of Guangdong communities in the 1940s found that “the clan was directed by the council of elders and the business manager. In principle, the council elders were the center of authority that made all important decisions concerning the affairs of the clan.”79 Even though in some lineages the power of the elders and the lineage head was paramount only in a formal sense, their moral authority was still vital in the functioning of the lineage. The positions of the elders and the councils they made up occupied the highest level of the formal power hierarchy. In some lineages the real power was vested in managers of ancestral estates and corporate property. In most cases, these elite positions were awarded on merit. According to Chen Han-sheng, “The clan manager, the clan treasurer, or the clan chief-accountant, is usually somebody who in his early years had passed the civil service examinations, or somebody who has graduated from a certain provincial school.”80 The manager tended to be someone who had certain qualifications for the position. There were also specific rules on the terms of appointment: “normally, the clan treasurer or the clan chief-accountant holds his office for one year, but he may be reappointed year after year.”81 Potter’s study of lineages in the New Territories of Hong Kong in the 1960s found that: The tenure of office for the manager of the ancestral lands varies from one group to another within the village. In some groups, one manager may serve one year at a time, whereas in other groups, one manager may serve throughout his lifetime. Life tenure, however, is not common in the village and is usually found only in the smaller ancestral estates that do not have sizable property holdings. Most “kincorporations,” if they may be called by the term, stipulate that the managership

77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

This was quoted in Jiangxi Soviet Area Provincial Party Committee, 1932, p. 445. Chen Han-sheng, 1936, p. 37. C. K. Yang, A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1959), p. 93. Chen Han-sheng, 1936, p. 38. Ibid.

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When each fang decided who should have the privilege of acting as the manager for the lineage during its tenure of management, it either used the lottery method or selected an educated member.83 From these examples we can see that the formal leadership in lineages was either based on seniority, like lineage heads and lineage councils, or on merits, like lineage managers and treasurers. There were extensive and elaborate rules on who was qualified for leadership positions. In some sense there was a disjunction between economic and political powers in lineages. Even though a rich member might have greater influence on lineage affairs than a poor member, the formal decision-making institutions and rules in lineage organizations were unrelated to the wealth of members. This feature is unique in the various forms of agrarian social organizations.

Class Differentiation in Lineage-Based Communities The preceding sections of this chapter, however, should not be taken to imply that lineage-based communities in southeastern China were classless communities. On the contrary, a lineage community was like the larger society in that historical and social forces also created among its members groups of different wealth and status. First, even though corporate land constituted an important part of peasant economies in southeastern China, most land was still private. There were landlords and tenants. Some were rich and some poor. Within lineages, even though corporate land affected all lineage members economically, some members also had their own private land while others were completely landless. Therefore, although Chen Han-sheng found that four out of every five peasants in Guangdong lived with their lineages, the distribution of private land varied widely. He gave the average land holding per family for each of the four categories of peasants: landlord, 203 mu (roughly 34 acres); rich peasant, 24.8 mu; middle peasant 6.0 mu; and poor peasant, 2.0 mu (roughly onethird of an acre).84 In fact, poor peasants made up about 74% of Guangdong families while owning only 19% of the land. Mao Tse-tung’s study of Xunwu County in southern Jiangxi found that even though 40% of the land was corporate, the landlord class, which made up about 4% of the population, still owned 30% of the land while all other peasants, who made up 92% of the population, owned only 30% of the land.85 82. For the rules of selecting lineage managers in the New Territories of Hong Kong, see Potter, 1968, p. 105. 83. Ibid. 84. For these statistics, see Chen Han-sheng, 1936, p. 7. 85. See Mao Tse-tung, 1990, p. 122.

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In the western Fujian county of Changting, even though corporate land was 33% of the total, landlords held another 30%. Peasants, who made up at least 70% of the population, had only 15% of the land. Commercial capitalists held another 20%.86 Thus, in southeastern China, which had a lineage-dominated agrarian social structure, a strong landlord economy operated beside the corporate-based economy. Second, within lineages different segments that made up the organization might also have very different economic status. Individual members of some segments held more wealth than other members. Potter gives a simple description of the differentiation process. Among the corporate land of a lineage, some, if not most, was owned by all members of the lineage, and every male had an equal share of its income. However, frequently lineages also developed within themselves several segments. Each segment might also have its own land. Its income was not divided among all individuals in the segments but rather by branches. If the founder of a segment had two sons, the income would be divided into two equal parts. If one of these two sons produced six sons, then his share of the income would be divided after his death into six equal parts, each of which consisted of one-twelfth of the original estate. If the other son of the founder had only one son, then he would get his father’s entire share, or one-half of the original estate. Thus, the members of the third generation of the segment would share unequally in the common property of the segment.87 Naturally, these processes gradually led to disparate wealth holdings within lineages, and social differentiations began to emerge. The richer members could further consolidate their position by purchasing private land and might become private landlords. With time, within the same segment some members became landlords while other members became tenants. Third, a political class used its position to exploit the rest of the lineage and became wealthy in the process. Even though the lineage head and managers were selected largely because of their seniority or merits, these lineage leaders often misused their powers in lineage management to make themselves rich. Chen Han-sheng observes that lineage income, consisting of rent from land, houses, fish ponds, and interest on loans, was often embezzled by lineage managers. As in some cases, “the common property of a clan is so manipulated as to become a modified form of private property. The vast sum of clan incomes, representing the fruit of the labor of multitudes, is quietly passing into the possession of a relatively few people.”88 As Chen Han-sheng concludes, this created “a new exploiting class which [was] able to turn the common heritage, such as the clan lands, to individual use.”89 However, as he noted, in the lineage such misuse of power by the governing members 86. 87. 88. 89.

These statistics were from CCP Changting County Party Committee, 1930, p. 287. For this discussion of the social differentiation process among segments, see Potter, 1968, pp. 108–9. Chen Han-sheng, 1936, p. 38. Ibid., p. 39.

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of the organization was unknown to the great majority of the peasant members. The formal rules on selection of leadership and decision making disguised the abuse of power by lineage leaders. In sum, even though lineage as a formal organization dominated the rural communities of southeastern China, a landlord economy still operated actively alongside the corporate economy. Collective and common group identity promoted by lineage ideology coexisted with class differentiation among lineage members.

Summary Southeastern China was marked by constant intercommunity competition for survival. This was caused by migration and demographic change in a resource-poor frontier region. Communities had to organizationally adapt to this unique environment. During the process of organizational response, strong corporate lineages emerged as the dominant form of community organization in the region. The organizational principles of lineages created the most stable type of community cooperative institution. Their emphasis on ritual unity, common corporate property, extensive welfare services, and elder-controlled decision-making processes helped strengthen group solidarity, which was essential for survival amid constant intercommunity competition. However, all the efforts by lineage organizations to promote an ideology of formal equality and brotherhood coexisted nonetheless with objective social differentiation among community members.

5 Paramilitarily Organized Hunan Peasant Communities

While community competition in a resource-poor frontier society constituted the environment of southern Jiangxi, peasant rebellions and state breakdown shaped the social environment of Hunan in the late Qing. This chapter studies how during the nineteenth century the organizational context of Hunan rural communities became highly militarized in response to the widespread peasant rebellions and state breakdown. The chapter examines how a militia system became the dominant form of communal organization in Hunan. The sections of this chapter deal successively with peasant rebellions and state breakdown during the mid-nineteenth century, the organizational response of Hunan communities, the organizational features of the militia system, state breakdown in the early Republican era, and finally the degeneration and transformation of communal paramilitary organizations into instruments of class rule.

The Taiping Rebellion and Its Impact on Rural Hunan The Taiping Rebellion, which lasted from 1850 to 1864, was the greatest peasant rebellion in Chinese history. It surpassed other peasant rebellions in both temporal and spatial dimensions. Not only did it last much longer than other peasant rebellions, it also established an alternative government that effectively controlled some of the richest and most populous provinces of China. The Taiping Rebellion was organized by a Christian named Hong Xiuquan through his sect, Worshipping God Society, in Guangxi Province in southwestern China. Because of its millennial appeal the rebellion quickly drew a large crowd of followers and expanded into forces of about 20,000 by the end of 1850. Taiping forces won a series of victories against the Qing army because of the talents of the Taiping leaders and their highly disciplined and cohesive forces.1

1.

For the early Taiping history, see Li Chun, A Military History of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1982), Vol. 1, pp. 12–80.

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In 1852, Taiping forces decided to leave Guangxi and expand into richer and more populous Central China along the Yangtze River. They first entered Hunan to the north of Guangxi. For more than a decade, the province of Hunan was fundamentally shaped by the Taiping Rebellion. Taiping forces passed through the entire province of Hunan in 1852. In October they almost captured the capital city of Changsha. Although because of a change in strategy Taiping forces later decided to just pass through Hunan and instead occupy Hubei Province to the north, Hunan for more than a decade was the battle line between the orthodox and Taiping forces, which now controlled all the provinces east of Hunan along the Yangtze River to the eastern coast of China. More importantly, the Taiping Rebellion created a revolutionary opportunity for the already highly unstable Hunan society. Before the arrival of the Taiping forces, Hunan had had a long history of rebellions differing in nature and size. Besides a strong ethnic minority presence in the west of the province, Hunan had also been strongly influenced by various sects, primarily the White Lotus Society and the Heavenly Earth Society. Under the organization of these sects, Hunan had witnessed a surge of peasant uprisings since the late eighteenth century. As Long Yunsheng found, in the half century before the Taiping Rebellion, Hunan experienced on average one rebellion each year. Throughout China, only Guangxi Province ranked ahead of Hunan in the frequency of peasant rebellions.2 According to Long, “In more than half a century, in terms of fierce class confrontation, Hunan perhaps ranked at the forefront of the entire country.”3 When Taiping forces swept through Hunan, they created a vast revolutionary opportunity for rebellious native forces. These forces seized on the weakening of the traditional state order and the defeat of the Qing army to undertake a new wave of uprisings. In 1852, in Guiyang Prefecture, Gu Yunhong organized a rebellion. He created a dynasty called Hong Shuen and had a large following among peasants.4 In Yongxing County, Liu Daiwei launched another uprising in March of the same year. His forces captured the city of Bingzhou and killed the magistrate.5 In Ningxiang County, when the Taiping forces were attacking the capital of Hunan, peasants rose up in large numbers and attacked landlords. The greatest native peasant rebellion in Hunan influenced by Taiping was Zhen Yitang’s rebellion in Liuyang County. When Taiping forces tried to capture the capital of Hunan, Zhen Yitang mobilized a peasant force of nearly 20,000 and seized control of Liuyang County. During the year of 1852, this rebellion was the largest and best organized in Hunan.6 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

See Long Yunsheng, A History of the Hunan Army (Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1990), pp. 24–27. Ibid., p. 27. Ibid., p. 51. Ibid. For more discussions on Zhen Yitang’s rebellion, see ibid., pp. 52–53.

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When Taiping forces swept through Hunan, local sects also responded enthusiastically. As one report by Qing official Jiang Zhongyuan noted, “Since [Taiping] entered Hunan, sect members are joining its force by the thousands each day.”7 Qing official Zeng Guofan also reported, “When Guangxi bandits [referring to Taiping] entered Hunan last year, most of the Heavenly Earth sect members joined their forces.”8 Qing general Sai Shang-a reported that the response from “bandits” in Hunan to the passing Taiping forces was even stronger than the peasants’ response to Taiping in its native province of Guangxi.9 These widespread peasant uprisings and the influence of Taiping greatly frightened the orthodox elites of Hunan. As their leader, Zeng Guofan, noted, “Hunan has long been an incubator for sect activities.” He predicted that “the breakout of rebellions by bandits will occur month after month and county after county.”10 The province was smoldering with a revolutionary explosion. Landed elites in Hunan faced a social challenge that they had never before experienced. They correctly perceived that because of the ineptitude of the Qing state, they had to rely on themselves to protect their interests.11 The regular Qing army had proven to be totally ineffective as a war machine during the Opium War with the British. Now this state repressive machinery was also defeated in battle after battle by the peasant army of Taiping. Hunan landed elites recognized clearly the futility of putting hope in the Qing state. From about 1852 on, they launched a series of organizational responses to the Taiping Rebellion. The result was completely restructured rural community organizations.

Mobilization: The Community Organizational Response To fight both Taiping and local rebellions, Hunan landed elites sought to strengthen institutional capacities to defend their interests. In essence, these organizational responses were designed both to mobilize resources for the orthodox side and to demobilize resources for the rebellious side. On this point, Tilly’s theory of mobilization offers many insights. Rather than viewing revolutions as a natural eruption of some long-contained social discontent, Tilly argues that any revolution is a political process that involves mobilization of resources. A revolution is possible only when revolutionary organizations mobilize enough resources to create a revolutionary situation. For Tilly, “mobilization refers

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Quoted in Li Chun, 1982, Vol. 1, p. 88. Quoted in ibid. Quoted in ibid. Quoted in Long Yunsheng, 1990, p. 60. For further analysis of the military responses by Hunan landed elites, see Zheng Dahua, “The Social Causes of the Emergence of the Hunan Army,” Xueshu luntan, No. 4 (1988), p. 21.

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to the acquisition of collective control over resources” by a group.12 As he asserts, “Without some mobilization, a group may prosper, but it cannot contend for power.”13 In the rebellious mid-nineteenth century in Hunan, to contend for power with rebellious organizations and to shape political outcomes in their own favor, mobilization became central to the survival of Hunan landed class, particularly when the Taiping rebels seemed unlikely to be stopped by the Qing state forces.14 As a result, Hunan landed elites launched unprecedented organizational efforts to mobilize resources to counter the rebels. These mobilization efforts had two components. One was active mobilization of resources by the landed class to defend its interests. The other was to demobilize rebel resources. Peasant rebellions are social movements that derive their momentum from continuously mobilizing discontented social sectors, primarily peasants. A rebellion could expand only if it could successfully recruit new members into the movement. To defeat a rebellion it was necessary to control the resources that could otherwise be mobilized by rebellious organizations. As Tilly observes, “Mobilization implies demobilization. Any process by which a group loses collective control over resources demobilizes the group.”15 Throughout the Taiping Rebellion, mobilization and demobilization were the central goals in the antirevolutionary struggles of the Hunan landed class. Elites from this class accordingly initiated a series of organizational responses to achieve these mobilization goals at both the provincial and local community levels. Although this study focuses on the local community-level organizational response, to fully understand it we must briefly discuss the provincial-level organizational response. The Hunan landed class correctly perceived that, because of the failure of the Qing army, they had to rely on themselves and build an alternative military instrument to defend not only their own interests but also the entire orthodox socioeconomic order of the time. They needed nothing less than a completely new army that could replace the inept Qing army. Zeng Guofan, a high-ranking Qing official and the leader of the Hunan gentry class, led the process of conceiving and building a private military force, the Hunan Army. Through his extraordinary leadership, the orthodox elites successfully coordinated an organizational effort of enormous scale. The landed elites’ mobilization of resources in Hunan was so successful that from the several battalions in 1853 the Hunan Army quickly expanded into a military force more than 400,000 strong.16 This organizational response by the Hunan landed class at the provincial 12. Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1978), p. 78. 13. Ibid. 14. For a more detailed description of the structure and organization of the Qing military establishment and its degeneration as a fighting force, see Luo Ergang’s classic, A New History of the Hunan Army (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1939), pp. 1–20. 15. Tilly, 1978, p. 76. 16. This figure is from Long Yunsheng, 1990, p. 438.

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level was achieved through a set of innovative institutions in recruiting, training, financing, and command and control.17 This private army from Hunan fought Taiping forces in all the provinces along the Yangtze River and almost single-handedly defeated Taiping forces in 1864. It was the first time in Chinese history that the landed class, by its own efforts, built a private army of national scale to defend the existing order. It was also the first time in Chinese history that the state was saved from great societal challenges because of the private efforts of its elite classes. At the height of its political and military influence, generals of the Hunan Army controlled the governorships of thirteen out of eighteen provinces in China.18 However, this chapter focuses on the local-level response by the landed class that had the most direct impact on communal organizational frameworks in Hunan. In addition to countering Taiping militarily through the Hunan Army on the national level, the landed class of Hunan correctly perceived that it must be able to counter Taiping forces and Taiping-instigated local rebellions on the home front. This meant that Hunan orthodox elites had to mobilize peasants at the community level. Not only would mobilization give rural communities the necessary resources to defend themselves against small-scale attacks, it would also demobilize potential rebel resources. The solution chosen by the Hunan landed class to mobilize for community defense and demobilize for containment purposes was to build and impose a new kind of community organization. This organizational structure centered on a widespread system of militia institutions called tuan-lian. In Chinese tuan literally means “group” and lian means “training.” Zeng Guofan, the leader of the Hunan orthodox elites, noted that the community-level militia, tuan-lian, had two components. “Tuan was the system of baojia.” Baojia was the police population control system through group responsibility. Lian was to “build weapons and train able persons.”19 Thus, the tuan component of local militia emphasized community control and demobilization while the lian component emphasized community mobilization for self-defense against rebels. As Zeng argued, although tuan-lian “are not sufficient to defeat Guangxi enemies” [meaning Taiping regular forces], “they are quite enough to resist bandits” [meaning local rebels].20 Besides community mobilization for defense, Zeng Guofan also 17. For fuller discussion on the organizational innovations initiated by the Hunan Army, see Luo Ergang, 1939. 18. For further discussions on the dominance of Hunan generals in the Chinese politics of late Qing, see Long Yunsheng, 1990, p. 289. 19. Originally in Zeng Guofan, “Fu Wen Renwu shu” (A letter of reply to Wen Renwu), quoted in Zheng Dafa, “Tuan-lian in Hunan during the Taiping Rebellion,” Hunan shifan daxue shehui kexue xuebao, No. 4 (1986), p. 88. 20. Originally in Zeng Guofan, Zeng Wenzheng gong zougao (Draft memorials of Zeng Guofan), Vol. 2, p. 2; quoted in Zhu Dongan, A Biography of Zeng Guofan (Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1986), p. 54.

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emphasized the demobilization function of tuan-lian for social control. He argued that it was crucial to “make peasants fear us more than fearing the bandits.”21 That is, the landed class must use the community police control system of baojia to create fear among peasants and raise the cost of switching to the rebel side. Baojia was a registration, surveillance, and mutual responsibility institution. Any failure to report illegal behavior or suspicious persons meant group punishment for the member families.22 The Changsha County Gazetteer describes how tuan-lian was supposed to perform mobilization and demobilization for community defense and control. For community defense, “bandits are hastily assembled groups that are unfamiliar with local conditions. They wander around and do not know where their destinations are. On the other hand, you [referring to peasants] are born and raised in the locale and already have good knowledge of where to set up checkpoints and where to set ambushes. Therefore, you cannot lose when the battle comes with bandits.” If every village fortified itself, then “bandits will have nowhere to loot and coerce. They will become tired and be killed or captured. It is impractical for peasants to attack bandits. It is, however, easy for them to defend themselves. It is impractical for peasants to battle large groups of bandits; it is, however, easy to battle small groups of bandits. We are well rested, but bandits are tired; we are familiar with the surroundings, but bandits are not; we live together, but bandits operate separately; we are well fed, but they are hungry. Isn’t victory on our side?”23 For community control, “building tuan-lian will first clear the population registration. It is easiest to hide bandits dispersed in the countryside. After clearing the registration, when we find suspicious persons, we will carefully examine them. We will either deport them or send them to jail. This will not give bandits a single chance in our community.”24 Because of the importance of tuan-lian for community defense, Hunan rural communities in a short time built an extremely widespread tuan-lian system. This organizational response at the community level completely militarized community organizational frameworks. Tuan-lian achieved a high level of organizational density in Hunan rural areas. For example, there were 121 tuan in Shanhua County alone.25 In  Huarong County there were 153 tuan.26 In Pingjiang County, the number was 21. Ibid., p. 56. 22. For more discussion on the baojia system, see Philip A. Kuhn, Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure, 1796–1864 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 25. 23. Changsha County Gazetteer, collected in Yang Yiqing, Historical Materials on Taiping in the Local History Gazetteers of Hunan (Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1987), p. 119. 24. Ibid. 25. Shanhua County Gazetteer, collected in Yang Yiqing, 1987, p. 148. 26. Huarong County Gazetteer, in ibid., p. 497.

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146.27 In the city of Changsha and its immediately surrounding rural areas there existed 87 tuan.28 In Xiangyin County, there was an astounding 318 tuan.29 In Liuyang County, in some areas there was one tuan every li (about one-third of a mile).30

Organizational Features of Tuan-lian This section discusses the organization, internal structures and rules, members and leaders, and the finances of tuan-lian in Hunan. The Organization of Tuan-lian Tuan-lian started at the community, or the village, level. In Philip A. Kuhn’s words, it was the village that constituted the “smallest nucleus of local militarization: the simplex tuan.” This village-level tuan was usually called a xiao tuan, meaning small tuan.31 Kuhn notes that although the simplex tuan was commonly based upon a single village, it sometimes came about that such a village served as an organizational nucleus for a small cluster of neighboring settlements. . . . A village with the leadership and resources to fortify itself might provide a haven for the populace of its less fortunate neighbors; a few small and weak communities might thereby be able to pool their manpower for a defense militia.32

Although the basic pattern of the simplex tuan was defined by a single village community, “the requirement of local defense inevitably brought forth larger scales of organization.” As Kuhn notes: To overwhelm the defense of an isolated village was a relatively simple business; but it was riskier to penetrate a confederation of fortified settlements. . . . Though the militia of a simplex tuan posed no great threat of numbers, a confederation could concentrate men from an area of many square miles and thus change the balance of forces very quickly.33

27. In Zheng Yifang, “Organizations and Functions of Tuan-lian during Qing: A Comparative Study of Hunan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Guangxi,” in Institute of Modern History, A Collection of Papers on the Modern and Contemporary History of China (Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1986), p. 669. 28. Changsha County Gazetteer, collected in Yang Yiqing, 1987, p. 123. 29. Xiangyin County Gazetteer, in ibid., p. 180. 30. Liuyang County Gazetteer, in ibid., p. 271. 31. Kuhn’s classic study of the tuan-lian militia system, Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China, remains the most authoritative account published in English. 32. Ibid., p. 67. 33. Ibid., pp. 67–68.

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For these advantages a confederation of a score or more villages might form a large tuan, which was called by Kuhn a multiplex tuan. Many Hunan local history gazetteers of the era reveal that these multiplex tuan were usually called zongju (general bureaus) or zongtuan (general tuan). For example, Changsha County was divided into 10 du (the administrative unit below the county). Each du had one general bureau that coordinated the defense of simplex tuan in the area.34 In Xiangyin County, 318 small tuan were coordinated through 29 “general bureaus,” which belonged to 25 du in the county.35 In Liuyang County, each 10 small tuan were organized into a “general tuan.”36 As we can see, the militarization of Hunan rural communities was highly systematic. Village communities were incorporated into a well-coordinated large defensive web. The elaborate militia networks within each county had an impressive mobilization system that could present a formidable defense for the region. Internal Structures and Rules of Tuan-lian However, it was the organization and operation of simplex, or small, tuan at the village community level that is of most interest to this study. As I have discussed, the tuan system had two components. One was the baojia system for community control. The other was the lian system for community defense. A tuan must contain both institutions at the community level. I will discuss the internal organization and rules of tuan at the community level using the examples from Anhua County. These are taken from the Anhua County Gazetteer. The baojia component and the lian component were separately discussed by the gazetteer. As to the baojia system: In each tuan ten families are grouped into a pai. Ten pai make up one jia. Ten jia in turn make up one bao. . . . Some tuan are big and some are small. A tuan is composed either of one bao or of three to four bao. . . . No matter whether it is gentry, soldiers, or ordinary people, every family and every man must be organized. . . . After ten families are grouped into one pai, each family must hang a plate on the door with names of family members on it. . . . If a family moves in or moves out, the rest of the ten families must know which tuan and jia this family used to belong or which tuan or jia it is moving to. . . . If there are births, deaths, and marriages among the ten families, they must be recorded and posted on the door plate. . . . Each bao head must compile two copies of records that illustrate the names and occupations of each family. One copy is sent to the tuan, the other to the county for issuing door plates. Door plates have three types. One is for families. Gentry, soldiers, and peasants use it. The second type is for business. Stores 34. Changsha County Gazetteer, in Yang Yiqing, 1987, p. 122. 35. Xiangyin County Gazetteer, in ibid., pp. 180–81. 36. Liuyang County Gazetteer, in ibid., p. 271.

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and factories use it. It must state what kind of business is involved, what is the name of the business, partners, and employees. The third type is for temples. . . . As to inns, since there are many kinds of guests, they must prepare two copies of registration recording who is lodging at the inn, what their occupations are, and where they are going. One copy is kept by hotels, the other is sent to the tuan. . . . It is impossible that no family will house bandits and sect members. Ten families must watch over each other. If one family committed a crime while others fail to report, then ten families are punished together. . . . If the head of pai fails to report, he is also punished. If someone once joined sects or bandits but wants to show remorse, neighbors and bao and jia heads can apply for parole on his behalf. If the person does not reform himself, then ten families and bao and jia heads must send him to state officials.37

As these paragraphs on the baojia system in communities in Anhua County indicate, this community control institution was highly sophisticated. There was a complete system of record keeping, registration, mutual surveillance, and group punishment. The goal was to demobilize peasants from potential rebellions and to contain infiltration by rebels and sect organizations. As to the lian component of tuan-lian in Anhua communities: Each family of a tuan must select one family member to serve as a tuan brave. The ten families of a pai must thus have ten tuan braves. As to families of large size, two out of every five members must be selected to serve as braves. . . . When there is no emergency, tuan braves still work in the field. When emergency comes, they must gather quickly. However, they defend only their own county and will not be used outside the territory. . . . Tuan braves must be strong and in good health. No matter whether from gentry families or whether they own property, everyone above sixteen and below fifty must be ready to serve in tuan. Hooligans and outsiders cannot join tuan. After tuan braves are selected, the tuan head must have a registration record on how many members he commanded, what are their names, ages, and residence. . . . Each tuan has a blue and red flag, identifying on it the name of the tuan. Each tuan must select a strong and brave person to carry the flag around the tuan head. When something happens, this can become the focus of tuan braves. . . . For those tuan within twenty li (about six miles) of each other, they must meet twice a month for exercise. This can let different tuan better know each other and thus better coordinate their actions. . . . Tuan must know where to set defense and ambush within their territories. They must select defensible positions and prepare guns, mines, and cannons. If bandits are found approaching, the tuan head must organize defense at these positions. . . . Even though tuan are established at different locations, neighboring tuan must support each other when something happens. If other tuan are fighting with bandits, neighboring tuan must get there quickly. Those who fail to respond will be court martialled.38

37. Anhua County Gazetteer, in ibid., pp. 350–52. 38. Ibid.

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This community-based militia system was effective in suppressing local peasant rebellions in Hunan and small-scale intrusions by Taiping forces. According to Zheng  Dafa, during the Taiping Rebellion there were seventy-seven local peasant rebellions in Hunan. All of them were put down by tuan-lian. In Ningyuan County alone 1,200 peasants were killed by tuan-lian during 1855–57.39 The social control system worked effectively for its purpose. For example, Long Yunsheng reveals that in many places in Hunan residents did not need to lock their doors at night, and thieves completely disappeared. It was recorded that when Taiping forces attacked Changsha, local peasants and “bandits” did not dare to respond.40 Characteristics of Tuan-lian Members and Leaders The members of tuan were unique in that neither leaders nor members had anything to do with the state. Tuan were societal institutions that emerged as a community organizational response to environmental challenges. They were, as in Kuhn’s words, completely “natural institutions.” As such, tuan members had two features. First, peasants were also soldiers. Tuan members had a double identity. When emergencies arose, they became soldiers. Other times, they tilled the land. Military training took place when agricultural work was slow. As recorded by the Liuyang County Gazetteer, each group of ten families was led by its head to practice combat skills either during their spare time or in the evenings under the moon.41 Ex-professional soldiers or martial art experts were hired by villages to train tuan members.42 The combat readiness and combat skills of tuan were regularly and frequently inspected by tuan leaders or leaders from general bureaus, the multiplex tuan.43 In essence, village life organized around tuan was militarized. Daily life in a community was characterized by a high combat readiness and high consciousness of military responsibility among community members. Every family was involved through a sophisticated and elaborate web of organizations. In principle every family of a village must in one way or another contribute to the common defense of the community. In Changsha County, “all above fifteen and below sixty, no matter poor or rich, noble or humble, must be ready to serve in tuan.” In Anhua County, “all above sixteen and below fifty, no matter whether from gentry family and possessing property, must be ready to serve in tuan.” Each family had to select one member as a tuan brave. Large families had to select two or even more members.44 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

Zheng Dafa, 1986, p. 58. Long Yunsheng, 1990, p. 144. Liuyang County Gazetteer, in Yang Yiqing, 1987, p. 271. See Xia Lingen, “Research on Tuan-lian in Modern History,” Jiangxi shehui kexue, No. 2 (1982), p. 16. Xiangxiang County Gazetteer, in Yang Yiqing, 1987, p. 309. For these regulations of tuan-lian, see Zheng Dafa, 1986, p. 56.

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However, although every family of a community contributed to tuan, tuan leaders almost always came from the landlord gentry class. This was the second feature of tuan. Almost all the county gazetteers of the era recorded the strict practice that tuan leaders must be gentry. For example, Changsha County Gazetteer recorded that tuan leaders must be gentry “who enjoy widespread respect in the countryside.”45 Shanhua County Gazetteer also recorded that tuan leaders must be gentry who were “careful and sagacious.”46 The Qing government, even though it played no direct role in the creation of tuan-lian, nonetheless encouraged the process by rewarding the gentry class with official positions if they distinguished themselves during the organization-building process of tuan. Gentry with an examination degree of juren (the title attained at provincial-level examinations) could be promoted to jinshi, the highest degree of civil service examination. Those with a gongsheng degree (the title attained at county-level examinations) could be awarded with juren.47 This was a compelling motivation for the gentry class in a society where career advancement depended significantly on achievement in civil service exams. These policies from the Qing government gave the gentry class strong incentives to distinguish itself in the creation and organization of community militia organizations. However, this gentry class was essentially the landed class. The traditional Chinese gentry class was defined as those with titles from civil service examinations, including gongsheng at the county level. Only the landed class had the financial resources to educate their children for ten to twenty years for civil service exams. Thus, though not all, the great majority of the gentry class that led the militarization process in Hunan was from the landed class. Organizing tuan-lian was essentially a collective action by the landed elites. Long Yunsheng surveyed the class background of seventy-nine key figures of the Hunan gentry class who played major roles in the creation of the Hunan Army and local militias. He found that 74% of them were from the landlord class.48 The leading role of the landed gentry class was not at all surprising. Peasant rebellion first of all posed a fundamental threat to the landed class rather than to the state. The first goals of peasant mobilizations were usually to overthrow the existing land system. To attract greater support from poor peasants, larger rebellions, such as Taiping, often had explicit land programs. Smaller rebellions and uprisings also frequently attacked landlords and distributed their property to peasants. Therefore it was natural for the landed class to stand out and lead an organizational response in communities to mobilize antirevolutionary resources. Tuan-lian as community

45. 46. 47. 48.

In Yang Yiqing, 1987, p. 121. In ibid., p. 307. Zheng Dafa, 1986, p. 57. See Long Yunsheng, 1990, p. 99.

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defense organizations were essentially class institutions defending the interests of Hunan landed elites. The Finances of Tuan-lian Finally, the finance systems of tuan were unconventional in that they were completely financed by societal means. Since they were community organizations, the Qing government did not pay a penny to create or maintain them. Financing for this widespread militia system came from several sources: donations, forced contributions, commerce taxes, and land taxes.49 The original source of tuan finance was largely donations from the landed gentry class. They had most at stake in peasant rebellions and thus had the strongest incentives to create community defense organizations. Therefore, many landlords generously donated their property. Another way to finance tuan was through forced contributions from all families. Usually rich families paid more than less well-off families. By this method the landed class could share the financial burden with other segments of communities. However, donations, whether voluntary or forced, were not institutionalized financing methods. Even though the landlord class generously supported tuan initially, it was unwilling and unable to contribute endlessly. Since tuan-lian were formal organizations that needed stable financial sources, alternative methods had to be found to institutionalize the tuan-lian system in communities. One solution was commerce taxes. Tuan set up tax collection points on bridges, rivers, and trade routes. Barterers, businessmen, and ordinary peasants had to pay a certain percentage of the value of their goods to finance tuan activities in the area. However, the most important tax source for tuan was a special land tax. Local residents paid this tax according to how much land they possessed. In Guiyang Prefecture, for example, each shi of wheat or 20 dou of rice would pay 4,000 wen for tuan-lian tax (shi and dou were units of weight and wen was a unit of currency).50 In Xiangxiang County the land tax for tuan-lian was based either on the amount of land held by a family or on the productivity of the land.51 In Shanhua County, the land tax was based on the productivity of the land.52 The land tax gradually came to constitute the most important source for financing tuan in Hunan. In his study of Xiangxiang County, Kuhn found that funds for tuan in 1859 were predominantly based on the land tax, which was 103,395 taels out of 49. For more discussions on the financial bases of tuan-lian, see Xia Lingen, 1982, p. 14; Zheng Yifang, 1986, pp. 663–64. 50. In Zheng Dafa, 1986, p. 59. 51. Xiangxiang County Gazetteer, in Yang Yiqing, 1987, p. 315. 52. Ibid., p. 352.

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the 117,668 taels total.53 The land tax had advantages over other sources of financing. It was much more predictable and therefore was more compatible with the formal organization of tuan. In sum, tuan-lian were widespread community defense organizations in rural Hunan. They had elaborate structures and organizational rules. The landed gentry class created the system as a communal organizational response to the peasant rebellions and state breakdown. Tuan-lian were created to mobilize antirevolutionary forces and demobilize potentially rebellious forces. This widespread militia system completely militarized the organizational framework of Hunan rural communities.

Tuan-lian after Taiping The 1864 defeat of Taiping by the Hunan Army did not end the militarization of Hunan community organizational frameworks. Once organizations came into being, they took on a life of their own. More importantly, the environment of Hunan after Taiping continued to require mobilization of rural communities. The first threat came from the sect activities of Gelao Hui in Hunan after the defeat of Taiping. The second threat came from the great social chaos during state breakdown in the early Republican era. Gelao Hui was a sect that originated within the Hunan Army during the war with Taiping. Originally its purpose was to strengthen the ties among soldiers so that they would sacrifice their own lives to save each other in battle.54 With the end of the war, the great majority of the 400,000-member Hunan Army was discharged. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers suddenly returned to Hunan and became unemployed. As a result, discontent in this social sector rose, and Gelao Hui greatly expanded and changed into an anti-Qing organization. From the early 1870s to the 1890s, according to Cai Shaoqing, Gelao Hui became the largest and most important sect organization in South China, especially in the provinces along the Yangtze River.55 Gelao Hui during these decades organized widespread anti-Qing operations, including numerous rebellions. Hunan, the province where Gelao Hui originated, was thrown into new social instabilities after Taiping. “The social contradictions of Hunan were not lessened after the defeat of Taiping. Rather, they were further sharpened.”56 A Qing official reported that rebellions by Gelao Hui in Hunan occurred almost every year.57 A Qing 53. These figures are from Kuhn, 1970, p. 153. 54. For the origins of Gelao Hui, see Luo Ergang, “Gelao hui and the Hunan Army,” Shehui kexue jikan, No. 2 (1989). 55. See Cai Shaoqing, “Chinese Secret Societies in Late Qing,” Qingshi yanjiu tongxun, No. 1 (1988a), p. 25. 56. Zheng Dafa, 1986, p. 59. 57. Ibid.

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high official, Guo Kuntao, complained that “the more we suppress sects, the more they become.” He listed twenty-four counties in Hunan that were “infested” with sect activities. “Especially in the prefectures of Chenzhou and Guiyang, sects make attempts every year.”58 From 1865 to 1872 there were twenty-two rebellions in Hunan by Gelao Hui. The 1870 uprising at Xiangxiang forced the Qing government to declare martial law even in the neighboring provinces of Hubei and Jiangxi. In 1871, Gelao Hui rebellions occupied the counties of Yiyang and Longyang.59 The widespread sect activities of Gelao Hui even directly threatened Zeng Guofan’s family. The sect made attempts to assassinate Zeng’s brothers and his family in Hunan (Zeng was then the governor of Zhili Province and lived by himself in North China). His wife and daughter wrote to him asking for permission to leave Hunan and take refuge in Nanjing City in Jiangsu Province.60 Zeng Guofan also wrote to his brothers at home: “People all say that Hunan is not a happy land and must have its turn of bad fortune. If great chaos takes place in Hunan, the entire family must immediately flee.”61 Therefore, the social environment of Hunan after Taiping continued to be highly unstable because of the widespread activities of sects. Hunan landed gentry displayed great frustration with the fact that their defeat of Taiping did not bring peace at home. Zeng Guofan complained that, after decades of his efforts to save the orthodox political order, he could not even have a safe place to retire in Hunan. He wondered, “In this situation of universal instability, where can I safely settle down?”62 State breakdown in the early Republican era provided further reason for continued mobilization of rural communities. In 1911, a revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty, and a Republic was for the first time established in China. However, the Chinese state broke down after this. The central government lost control over the country, and provinces achieved de facto autonomy. After the death of military strongman Yuan Shikai in 1916, warlord politics emerged in China. Modern China entered its darkest era. Hunan was not spared the political crisis of state breakdown. In 1917, northern warlord Duan Qirui attempted to unify China, and this brought him into wars with southern warlords who wanted to maintain their autonomy. Duan’s army pushed into Hunan that year while the army of the warlords of Yunnan Province, to the south of Hunan, also entered the province to counter the attack. Hunan became a battlefield for warlord armies. In 1918, warlord Wu Peifu of Hubei Province also entered the 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

This report by Guo Kuntao is quoted in Long Yunsheng, 1990, p. 504. Zheng Dafa, 1986, p. 59. Zhu Dongan, 1986, p. 273. Originally in Zeng Wenzheng gong jiashu, quoted by Long Yunsheng, 1990, p. 505. Originally in Zeng Wenzheng gong quanji, quoted in ibid.

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war.63 His army entered Hunan and occupied the province. More wars followed this. According to Tang Suyan’s study, there were wars among warlord armies in Hunan every year from 1920 to 1925.64 In this process of state breakdown, Hunan rural communities came under grave threats. According to Zheng Yifang’s study of Hunan militia, marauding warlord soldiers and bandits became widespread.65 In 1919, the Hunan Rehabilitation Association compiled A Record of Calamities in Hunan, which provided detailed descriptions of the widespread damage done by these forces. The book also revealed that warlord armies, mostly from other provinces, paid little attention to bandit activities. If they pretended to make efforts to suppress bandits, their campaigns usually ended in looting villages.66 As a result of this great social instability amid state breakdown, rural communities again found that they had to rely on themselves to defend their own lives and property. The Hunan provincial government in 1918 and 1922 issued orders to counties to strengthen local militias.67 Local communities responded by buying more guns and training more militias. A Record of Calamities in Hunan recorded these attempts by local communities to strengthen their defense capabilities as well as several accounts of battles between tuan and bandits.68 As Edward A. McCord notes, “Warlordism therefore created conditions that fostered the growth of banditry, and this banditry, in turn, made it necessary for local communities to raise or expand their self-defense forces.”69 The social instability in Hunan after Taiping thus maintained the position of tuan-lian in rural communities. By the time of the Hunan peasant revolution in 1926, Mao Tse-tung, a Hunan native, estimated that the Hunan landlord class had a combined militia of at least 45,000 guns.70 This was a sizeable societal military force for any province in China.

63. For a brief account of the history of Hunan during this period, see Zhang Yuanpeng, A Study on Regional Modernization in China: Hunan Province, 1860–1916 (Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1983), pp. 137–38. 64. See Tang Suyan, “The Hunan-Hubei War and Its Consequences,” in Southwestern Association of Warlord Studies, ed., Research on the History of Southwestern Warlords (Kunming: Yunnan renmin chubanshe, 1985), p. 96. 65. Zheng Yifang, 1986. 66. See Hunan Rehabilitation Association, A Record of Calamities in Hunan (Changsha: Hunan Rehabilitation Association, 1919), pp. 145–47. 67. See Zheng Yifang, 1986. 68. Hunan Rehabilitation Association, 1919, pp. 155–58. 69. In Edward A. McCord, “Militia and Local Militarization in Late Qing and Early Republican China: The Case of Hunan,” Modern China, Vol. 14, No. 2 (1988), p. 179. 70. In Mao Tse-tung, 1927, “An Investigation Report on the Peasant Movement in Hunan,” collected in Mao Tse-tung ji, p. 232.

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The Transformation of Tuan-lian into Instruments of Class Rule The most interesting aspect of tuan was not how they continued to develop as defensive organizations after the Taiping Rebellion, but how they transformed themselves into community organizations with much broader functions. This section discusses how tuan-lian degenerated into an instrument of open class rule in Hunan. Although tuan-lian were originally defense institutions, albeit primarily defending the interests of the landed class, they, like most formal organizations, gradually acquired other roles and functions in their communities, often little related to their original roles. They developed from a militia institution into a class institution that performed a wide range of functions to maintain the dominance of and exploitation by the landed upper class. To understand this transformation process, we must first briefly discuss the traditional relationship between the state and the landed gentry class in China. Changes in the Relationship between the State and the Local Gentry Class Although China long had autocratic politics, the penetration by the state into the society was limited. According to Hsiao Kung-chuan’s classic study, the state reached down only to the county level. The county magistrate and his small bureaucratic staff was the lowest level of state structure. Governance in the countryside was handled and controlled by the landed gentry.71 As Kuhn observes, “Local government largely depended on enlisting the energies of local people and organizations for attaining state purposes and carrying out state functions.”72 To do this, the state had to recognize the informal powers of local elites. Thus, before the Taiping Rebellion, the gentry class already had substantial power in the countryside. They served as a kind of middleman between the state and the vast peasant society. However, there existed a kind of balance between the state and the local gentry class. The state still exercised sufficient control over this class to prohibit it from establishing open class rule in the rural areas. This balance of power came to an end after the defeat of Taiping. On the one hand, a series of political institutional developments weakened the Qing state and its control capability. On the other hand, tuan-lian provided the landed gentry class, for the first time, an institutionalized power base to carry out class rule.

71. For more discussions on the relationship between the Qing state and local gentry class, see Hsiao Kung-chuan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960). 72. Philip A. Kuhn, “Local Self-Government under the Republic: Problems of Control, Autonomy, and Mobilization,” in Frederic Wakeman Jr. and Carolyn Grant, eds., Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), p. 258.

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As most historians agree, the ways in which the Taiping Rebellion was defeated contributed to the weakening of the Qing state in the long run. Taiping was defeated by a private military, the Hunan Army. Many of its generals became governors of provinces. The Hunan Army had a very important political impact in that it led to many institutional changes in Qing state rule. First, it led to the principle that a “general owns his soldiers.” Originally, the armed forces of Qing belonged to the state. Since the Hunan Army was a private army, soldiers were recruited and hired by generals and thus became their private property. Many provinces after Taiping began to establish semiprovincial and semiprivate armies. Second, provinces, many of them under the control of generals, also achieved financial autonomy during the Taiping Rebellion. Originally the tax and revenue systems of the Qing were monopolized by the central government, and provinces merely provided the bureaucratic machinery for collecting taxes on behalf of the central government. To facilitate the war effort, however, the central government delegated fiscal powers to provinces. They were allowed for the first time to levy taxes themselves.73 So, as the Qing state was weakened by the war, provinces greatly expanded their power and autonomy. The result was that in the latter half of the nineteenth century the control capability of the Qing central government over local powers had greatly declined. With this decline of central control capacity, the state’s balance of power with the landed class at the local level was also redefined. The highly centralized Qing state system depended on a hierarchical chain of authority and command. With its control at the provincial level greatly weakened, the control of the Qing state over local-level elites also diminished. The Degeneration of Tuan-lian Organizations in Hunan As state control at the local level declined, the landed gentry established an institutionalized power base through tuan-lian. Direct class rule in Hunan rural communities began to develop around tuan-lian organizations. There are many records on the degeneration of tuan-lian organizations into power instruments of the landed gentry. Tuan-lian for the first time permitted the landed class to institutionalize control of military means. It provided a power instrument for the landed class to pursue interests beyond the original role of community defense. With the decline of Qing state control, power shifted downward to the local level. In Hunan, Long Yunsheng points out that with the proliferation of tuan organizations, the power of the landed gentry was “expanding daily and even began to surpass that

73. For more discussions on the transformation of the central-provincial relationship in late Qing, see Lin Qian, “The Expansion of Provincial Governors’ Power after the Xianfeng Reign and Late Qing Politics,” Shehui kexue zhanxian, No. 1 (1989).

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of local state officials.”74 For example, in Xiangxiang County, the magistrate became a puppet of the gentry class that controlled the tuan. As the magistrate confessed, “Things are handled by bureaus [higher-order tuan] and not by officials. Power is in the hands of gentry and not officials.”75 More importantly, tuan under the control of the landed gentry began to widely abuse its power. As Xia Lingen observes, the downward shift of power provided opportunities for bad gentry and local bullies to control peasants and communities. According to one Qing document, tuan “used their power to build a dictatorship. Not only do local officials have no say in their willful killings, peasants know the authority of only tuan heads but not that of county state officials.”76 The abuse of power by tuan was particularly severe because, as one Qing government document pointed out, it was the bad elements within the landed gentry class who usually controlled tuan and bureaus.77 According to the author, “Tuan heads use their power to profit for themselves. They exploit the weak and widows and savagely oppress the people. If they by chance defeat bandits, they become arrogant and imperious. If they set up private courts and levy taxes, state officials dare not ask. If they abuse and kill peasants, laws cannot be applied to them.”78 As the author asked, “If all tuan are like this, how can peace be achieved?” Qing scholar Wang Yingfu also observed the degeneration of tuan into a power tool of the landed class: “They are all under the control of tuan heads who use their power to resist laws. They do not pay taxes and do not observe regulations. Many even commit embezzlement and brutally oppress people.”79 In many places the dictatorship of tuan even put them in conflict with the state. Wang Yingfu observed that in some places tuan heads and county officials viewed each other as enemies because the power of tuan surpassed even that of the local government.80 Qing official Xue Fucheng recorded that in some places tuan “arbitrarily ruled in the countryside. State officials cannot examine their activities and state laws cannot be applied to them.” Thus, Qing troops sometimes had to be employed to crush extremely exploitative tuan.81 However, in most places local state officials became the puppets of the landed gentry who controlled the tuan. According to Qing scholar Xu Youke, when a tuan 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

Long Yunsheng, 1990, p. 144. Ibid. Xia Lingen, 1982, p. 17. Sun Dingchen, 1897, “Three Comments on Warfare,” in Sheng Kang, ed., A New Collection of the Classics of the Dynasty (Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1972, reprint), Vol. 81, pp. 2264–65. Ibid. Wang Yingfu, 1897, “On Tuan-lian,” in Sheng Kang, ed., A New Collection of the Classics of the Dynasty (Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1972, reprint), Vol. 81, p. 2280. Ibid. Xue Fucheng, 1897, “To the Minister for Tuan-lian Affairs,” in Sheng Kang, ed., A New Collection of the Classics of the Dynasty (Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1972, reprint), Vol. 81, p. 2305.

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issued orders, “officials not only had no courage to challenge, but also willingly acted like their lackeys.” Moreover, in some places county officials even allowed tuan to “raise the official banner of the county magistrate on their boats, which extort on the rivers during the day and openly rob during the night.”82 The degeneration of tuan into a tool of landed-class exploitation even caused some members of this class concern. Wang Kaiyun, a close aide to Zeng Guofan and the author of the classic Hunan Army, once passed through Xiangxiang, Zeng’s home county, and witnessed the degeneration of tuan and their exploitation of peasants. He became greatly alarmed, fearing that this would soon lead to new peasant rebellions. He warned, “I know instability is not far away from now.”83 Zeng Guofan, who initiated the tuan-lian system, also became alarmed by the dictatorship of tuan in rural Hunan. In his letter to Li Zhujun, who was probably a prefecture-level official, he asked whether Li could put out a poster that prohibited tuan from doing three things: arbitrarily and willfully killing peasants, using excessive force and cruel torture on peasants, and levying excessive taxes on peasants.84 Zeng Guofan argued that only some kind of control over tuan could win back the hearts of Hunan peasants. The Transformation of Tuan Functions in Hunan Communities However, since tuan were an organizational response initiated by the landlord class in Hunan rural communities, they inevitably and quickly degenerated into a tool of class exploitation and dictatorship. The most important consequence was the wide range of new powers that tuan gradually acquired and that became institutionalized in Hunan rural communities. Rent collection power. Originally, the landed class could not itself settle traditional rent disputes with tenants. There were state laws prohibiting arbitrary actions by the landed class in the countryside. Instead, rent disputes had to be settled through mediation and arbitration at the county magistrate’s courts. However, the degeneration of tuan amid diminishing state control in the late Qing for the first time gave the landed class the institutional means to settle rent-related disputes directly with peasants. The landlord class in Hunan could now use tuan to directly perform the function of rent collection. For instance, in Changzhou County landlords who had trouble with tenants over rent payment asked for help from a tuan. It was stipulated that the tuan collect rents 82. Xu Youke, 1897, “On Tuan Braves,” in Sheng Kang, ed., A New Collection of the Classics of the Dynasty (Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1972, reprint), Vol. 81, pp. 2299–300. 83. Originally in Wang Kaiyun, Xiangqilou riji, quoted in Zheng Dafa, 1986, p. 58. 84. Zeng Guofan, 1897, “Discussing Military Papers with Li Zhuquan,” in Sheng Kang, ed., A New Collection of the Classics of the Dynasty (Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1972, reprint), Vol. 81, p. 2376.

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from tenants on behalf of landlords and could keep a certain amount as commission.85 Wang Yingfu found that in some places “during spring and autumn, peasants paid their rent directly to tuan heads.”86 Moreover, he found that some tuan often held competitions among themselves in their rent collection work. Those that collected the least or slowest were fined by other tuan. As Wang Yingfu observed, “Tuan are eagerly vying with each other in their rent collection drives. None seems to be bothered by their rent collection roles. Because of this, there is nobody that dared to delay rent payment.”87 The rent collection power became so widespread that Zeng Guofan, the leader of Hunan landed gentry class, once observed in a letter that it was one of the two most important activities of tuan after the defeat of Taiping. “The activities of bureaus are nothing except practicing martial arts and rent collection.”88 Tax collection power. Besides rent collection for landlords, tuan also gradually became tax collection agencies for the state. The county magistrates found tuan a convenient tool for tax collection in the countryside. The landed gentry who controlled the tuan were also eager to perform this function because they could benefit from the process through embezzlement and bribery. As Kuhn found, the tax collection function in counties was originally performed by a bureaucratic apparatus called lijia. This system was often inefficient and ineffective. These problems could be solved through collaboration with tuan, which used their coercive power to collect taxes from peasants. Kuhn found that in Linxiang County of Hunan tax collection power was formally transferred from the regular lijia bureaucratic apparatus to gentry-dominated tuan.89 In Xinhua County in 1862, sixteen higher-order tuan “became formal components of the hierarchy of tax collection units.”90 The landed gentry used tuan to collect taxes for the state because they could profit from the process. In addition to embezzlement and bribery, they could also profit through a more institutionalized practice. The Qing state had a longtime practice of baolan (engrossment), which was “a form of unauthorized tax-farming in which local elites assumed the prerogative of collecting the tax of commoners for commission.” Under this baolan system, local landed elites had strong incentives to collect taxes in communities on behalf of the state.91 Peasants suffered most from this baolan system since it gave the landed class strong incentives to be exploitative and ruthless.

85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

In Xia Lingen, 1982, p. 15. Wang Yingfu, 1897, p. 2282. Ibid. Originally in Zeng Wenzheng gong shuzha, quoted in Xia Lingen, 1982, p. 15. See Philip A. Kuhn, 1970, p. 97. Ibid., p. 212. For more discussions on the baolan system, see Kuhn, 1970, p. 97.

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Taxing power. Besides collecting taxes for the state, tuan also gradually acquired their own taxing powers. Tuan originally depended on voluntary or forced donations to keep the organizations going. Gradually tuan were allowed to tax by themselves in order to find more institutionalized financial sources. The taxes came from commerce but primarily from a special land tax. The landed class had strong incentives to increase taxes because they could make themselves rich through embezzlement. As Zeng Guofan observed, “Tuan were originally on the side of law. However, they now practice bad deeds. County officials use them to collect fees. Bureau gentry themselves also profit from them.”92 To maximize their gains, the landed gentry who controlled tuan had a strong tendency to establish taxes under all kinds of pretexts.93 The excessive taxes levied by tuan greatly angered Zeng Guofan. He feared that this would turn Hunan peasants toward new rebellions. In a letter to Li Zhuquan, he complained that tuan had levied too much and called for tuan to reign in their taxing activities in the countryside.94 The broad economic power of tuan in Hunan was not confined to their taxing authority. In some places tuan even assumed the power of managing local public funds for such works as repairing roads and building bridges. In Liling County, for example, in one district the head of a higher-order tuan controlled local public funds for twenty years. He embezzled over 800 shi of grain during the process.95 Some tuan also used the grain they taxed from peasants to become loan sharks. For example, a tuan in Xiangtan County had 2,000 shi of taxed grain. The landed elites who controlled this tuan used it to make exploitative loans. When grain prices were high, they sold the grain and pocketed the profit. When grain prices were low, they forced local peasants to borrow the grain as loans with very high interest rates.96 Police and judicial powers. Tuan also helped the landed gentry class acquire formal coercive powers through performing police and judicial functions. As Kuhn observes, tuan acquired the police role through the baojia system, the harsh group responsibility system of social control.97 Tuan had the authority to arrest anyone who opposed their dictatorship in the community. With the decline of state control capability at the local level, tuan had complete freedom to intimidate Hunan communities. Tuan had their own judicial systems, including courts and jails. As Mao Tse-tung found of tuan in the Hunan countryside, “They have independent judicial authority 92. 93. 94. 95.

Originally in Zeng Wenzheng gong zougao, quoted in Xia Lingen, 1982, p. 16. For further analysis of the issue, see Zheng Yifang, 1986. Zeng Guofan, 1897, p. 2375. See Murong Chuqiang, “A Recollection of the Peasant Movement in Liuyang,” Hunan wenshi ziliao xuanji, Vol. 16 (1982), p. 59. 96. See “Report on the Peasant Movement in Xiangtan County,” Hunan sheng di-yi ci gongnong daibiao dahui rikan (Daily newsletter of the first conference of Hunan worker and peasant representatives), December 13, 1926, selected in Hunan lishi ziliao (HLZ), Vol. 1 (1980), p. 140. 97. Kuhn, 1970, p. 213.

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in arresting, interrogating, and imprisoning peasants.”98 Tuan could arbitrarily punish peasants who delayed or resisted paying taxes and rents. As many documents in the 1920s revealed, they could even execute leaders of activist groups working for the rights of peasants. These broad police and judicial powers of tuan were used by the landed gentry class as a coercive tool to enforce their power in other community affairs, such as rent and tax collection. To sum up, the landed gentry class in Hunan transformed tuan from community defense organizations into ones defending primarily the interests of the landed class and into organizations with a broad range of institutionalized powers that essentially represented a class dictatorship in rural communities. Tuan-lian became a tool of open class exploitation and oppression by the Hunan landed class.

The Incorporation of Tuan into Official State Structures Tuan emerged originally during the organizational response by Hunan rural communities to environmental challenges. As I have discussed, no official Qing state structures penetrated below the county level. Rather, state rule was carried out by the informal collaboration of local landed gentry who exercised influence in the countryside. With the emergence of tuan militia institutions and the expansion of their functions in rural communities, they gradually became part of official state structures in Hunan that ruled below the county level during the late nineteenth century. As Kuhn observes, “Most important, however, was a process by which the tuan, with its gentry leadership, was brought into the formal structures of government. The tuan now began to function as an official sub-district administrative organ.”99 McCord’s research on Hunan also noted this tuan transformation into official state structures in Hunan at the end of Qing. He points out that there is little question that tuan and higher-order multiplex tuan became “distinct administrative entities” under the name of du or li.100 In his classic 1927 study of Hunan, Mao Tse-tung also noted that du and tuan had acquired the status of local state institutions. Du were derived from higher-order multiplex tuan, with their own armed forces, taxing power, and judicial authority. They had jurisdiction over populations of 10,000–50,000. Tuan were the old simplex tuan and ruled in a smaller area. As Mao wrote, “The old rural administrative organs such as du and tuan, especially du, were completely controlled by bad gentry and local bullies.”101 98. 99. 100. 101.

Mao Tse-tung, 1927, p. 131. Kuhn, 1970, p. 212. McCord, 1988, p. 173. Mao Tse-tung, 1927, p. 131.

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A 1927 petition by Hunan peasants stated that tuan “were originally the military force of the Hunan landlord class to oppress peasants.” However, “in the era of warlord politics, they became the de facto government of rural areas. They are now the direct government organs that rule the peasant.”102 The incorporation of tuan into the official state structure was described by Kuhn as a process through which natural rural units became state administrative units. Tuan were originally natural units because they developed within rural communities as an organizational response to the environment. However, with the expansion of the roles and functions of tuan, they organizationally transformed into local-level state administrative units and lost their original character.103 This transformation by tuan from a natural to an administrative unit signaled the final establishment of direct class rule in Hunan rural communities. Tuan, as a landlord class-controlled power instrument, now formalized their hegemony in rural Hunan. This meant that local-level state structures now became class structures. The rule by an autocratic but openly “neutral” state was replaced by direct class rule at the local level.

Summary Tuan-lian were the dominant communal organizations in rural Hunan from the mid-nineteenth century and later underwent significant transformations. They were created originally for community mobilization and defense in the rebelliondominated social environment of the mid-nineteenth century. As recorded by local history gazetteers, they achieved an extremely high level of organizational density in rural Hunan. Peasant communities were organized around an elaborate system of militia defense institutions. However, tuan transformed into organizations with other functions and roles in community affairs. They developed into a class institution that perpetuated political dictatorship and economic exploitation by the landed gentry class. In the late nineteenth century and especially in the context of warlord politics in the early Republican era, tuan became the de facto local and community level government institutions.

102. Hunan People’s Petition Delegation, “The Real Situation of Peasant Movements in Hunan: A Report from Hunan People’s Petition Delegation,” June 22, 1927, Hunan lishi ziliao (HLZ), Vol. 1 (1981), p. 150. 103. Kuhn, 1970, pp. 100–102.

6 Communal Organizations and Agrarian Revolutions

This study intends to solve a puzzle. Although the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had little direct involvement in the Hunan peasant revolution of 1926–27, peasants’ revolutionary activities were spontaneous and radical. By contrast, even though the Jiangxi revolution of 1929–34 was entirely mobilized by the CCP, peasants remained passive and conservative. This chapter argues that agrarian revolution can be caused by peasants’ attempts to restructure the organizational principles of their communities. Peasants considered some organizational frameworks to be fair and just while others not. Agrarian revolution is here interpreted as an organizational phenomenon in which peasants seek to restructure illegitimate communal organizational orders and establish new rules for community cooperation. This organizational perspective on agrarian revolution, I argue, can resolve the puzzle this research addresses. This chapter examines first how different organizational principles of peasant communities influenced peasants’ perceptions of the fairness and justice of community organizational frameworks. It then explains how an organizational approach solves the puzzle presented by peasant revolutions in Jiangxi and Hunan.

Fairness, Justice, and Communal Organizational Legitimacy Although many peasant communities are organized by powerful cooperative institutions, peasants’ perceptions about the fairness and justice of these frameworks differ. As a result, peasants accord alternate organizational frameworks varying degrees of legitimacy. I argue that four considerations influenced peasants’ evaluation of the fairness and justice, and thus the legitimacy, of their community organizational frameworks. The first is their perception of the nature of intracommunity relationships defined by the organizational framework. Are the relationships among members characterized by equality and common interest or by inequality and conflicting interests? The second is peasants’ psychological orientation toward the community organizational framework. Do they have positive or negative attachments to their communal cooperative

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institutions? The third is access to organizational processes. Do most community members perceive that they can influence decision making? Can their voices be heard and their interests reflected in community decisions? The last consideration is the outcome of communal cooperative institutions. Who benefits from the community cooperative institutions? Can most members benefit from their community cooperative institutions, and are benefits more or less equally distributed? Peasants living in communities organized by voluntary and imposed cooperative institutions evaluate their communal organizational orders differently. Chapter 3 argues that communities organized by voluntary and imposed cooperative institutions vary along four dimensions in their organizational principles, which define peasants’ evaluation of their communal organizational frameworks: Organizational ideologies influence peasants’ perceptions of the nature of intracommunity relationships. Control measures influence peasants’ psychological attachment to their communal institutions. Decision-making procedures and the sources of elites define peasants’ access to organizational processes. Redistributive mechanisms define the outcome of a communal organizational order and the distribution of benefits. Communal Organizational Legitimacy in Jiangxi Peasants living in communities organized by voluntary cooperative institutions, such as the patrilineally organized Jiangxi peasant communities, are likely to evaluate their community organizational framework as fair and thus legitimate. First, the organizational ideology of these communities emphasizes shared group identity and common interests among members. Peasants perceive that intracommunity relationships defined by this communal organizational order are characterized by equality among members and shared beliefs and goals. As Eric Wolf observes about redistributive corporate peasant communities, although class divisions within these communities do exist, “the class structure must find expression with the boundaries set by the community.”1 As a result, according to Rubie Watson, the patrilineal ideology of communities in southeastern China “often appears to obliterate or at least temper, class differentiation.”2 An important means to institutionalize group consciousness in lineage-based communities in Jiangxi was the periodic efforts by almost all lineages, often at great expense, to compile genealogies that defined clearly who belonged to the organization. These genealogies, which were distributed to every family, allow members to trace their common roots easily. Although the early part of most genealogies is often fake, James Watson observes that this did not matter to the patrilineal organizations 1. 2.

See Eric Wolf, “Types of Latin American Peasantry : A Preliminary Discussion,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 57, No. 3 (1955), p. 458. Rubie Watson, “Class Differences and Affinal Relations in South China,” Man, Vol. 16 (1981), p. 594.

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in southeastern China, which tried to “assume the guise of an organization based on descent from a single ancestor.”3 This ideology of shared identity and equality in patrilineally organized communities is carefully maintained and reinforced by the frequent rituals of ancestral worship attended by all members. As David J. Kertzer notes, the use of common symbols and the performance of common rituals bind people together and give them a sense of common identity.4 For these reasons, lineages in southeastern China spent significant portions of their corporate income on ancestral worship. Organizational control in patrilineally organized communities emphasizes normative and remunerative powers. Normative powers are mainly achieved through the practice of community rituals that promote celebration of membership and acceptance as well as personal identification with the organization. Amitai Etzioni observes that organizations using normative power for control generate strong psychological attachment toward the organization.5 Members experience strong positive moral feelings about their relationship with the organization. In Jiangxi, communities used extensive ancestral worship and cult of patrilineal decent to strengthen members’ identification with the patrilineal organizations. As Kertzer maintains, one function of rituals is to “foster a particular view of the world” on the part of organizational members.6 The extensive use of rituals in southeastern China made the cult of patrilineal descent a worldview of lineage members. Through the manipulation of rituals, lineage-based communities in southeastern China generated a strong belief that patrilineal-based organization was the most natural and desirable form of human organization. Communities organized by voluntary cooperative institutions also use remunerative powers for control. This is mainly achieved by offering concrete material benefits to members who follow the rules and norms of the organization. Etzioni points out that remunerative power generates calculative psychological attachment toward the organization. Members have a positive attitude toward the organization so long as the organization can provide them with concrete and excludable material benefits.7 In Jiangxi peasant communities, the strong economic bases of patrilineal organizations, such as extensive corporate land, enabled them to provide many excludable material benefits to members and thus broadly utilized remunerative control powers. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

See James Watson, “Chinese Kinship Reconsidered: Anthropological Perspectives on Historical Research,” China Quarterly, Vol. 92 (1982), p. 504. David J. Kertzer, “The Role of Ritual in Political Change,” in Myron J. Aronoff, ed., Culture and Political Change (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1983). Amitai Etzioni, A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations (New York: The Free Press, 1975), p.12. Kertzer, p. 66. For more discussions on the psychological impact of different organizational control methods, see Etzioni, 1975, pp. 11–13.

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As documented in Chapter 4, in southern Jiangxi and western Fujian corporate land often constituted 30% of all land. From this material foundation, lineage-based communities offered powerful economic incentives for their members to follow rules and norms, including annual division of incomes from corporate property, preferential tenancy rights to corporate land and lower rents, lineage schools, and an extensive welfare service that included annual grants to the old and widowed and relief during famine. In this type of peasant community, decision making tends to follow consensus or some kind of democratic procedure. The community elites are selected either by merit or election. These communities, therefore, have open organizational processes. Peasants have access to community decision making and enjoy formal equal rights in the process (though for the most part, hired laborers and other outsiders do not). Peasants believe that their voices and interests are reflected in the community decision-making process. The patrilineally organized peasant communities in Jiangxi followed very similar practices in decision making and the sources of elites. As Chapter 4 examines in detail, the decision-making process in lineage-based communities of southeastern China formally did not discriminate against anyone. All male members enjoyed equal formal rights in decision making. The most important decisions concerning the organization, such as sale of corporate land, had to be collectively made by all male members. Routine decisions in these lineage-based communities were often handled by the council of elders. The council was sometimes subject to election. In many lineages, the real power of daily decision was controlled by lineage managers. Potter’s study found that the positions of managers rotated among the different branches and segments within lineages.8 Lastly, community cooperative institutions also benefit most community members. These communities tend to operate redistributive mechanisms to provide benefits to less well-off members. Interest redistribution is achieved by various kinds of leveling practices. In Jiangxi, the community could directly level wealth through the annual division of income from corporate property, lineage schools, grants to the old and widowed, and relief during famine. Corporate land of lineages played central roles in enabling the leveling practices. The frequent and expensive ritual of ancestral worship could also serve the leveling purpose. Wealthy members of the community were encouraged and pressured to shoulder parts of the communal ritual expenses. Ancestral worship psychologically contributed to the leveling process by downplaying the social and economic differences among participants. In sum, peasants living in communities organized by voluntary cooperative institutions, like Jiangxi peasant communities, are predisposed to positive evaluation 8.

For this rotation practice, see Jack Potter, Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), pp. 104–5.

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of and attachment to their community organizational frameworks. In community affairs peasants interpret these frameworks as fair and just. Communal Organizational Illegitimacy in Hunan In contrast, peasants living in communities organized by imposed cooperative institutions, such as Hunan peasant communities with paramilitary organizations, negatively evaluate their community organizational frameworks, judging them to be unfair and thus illegitimate. First, the organizational ideology of these communities emphasizes control and dominance by one segment of the community. This results in the perception by peasants that intracommunity relationship defined by the community organizational framework is characterized by inequality, dominance by some members, and conflicting interests among different community groups. The paramilitary organizations in Hunan peasant communities certainly did not seek to promote group consciousness and shared identity. Since the landed class imposed tuan-lian as the communal cooperative institution, its organizational cohesion did not depend on ideology but on coercion. As Chapter 5 discusses, the paramilitary organization emerged as an organizational response by Hunan communities to the environment of rebellion and state breakdown in the mid-nineteenth century. Although it provided a public good to the entire community, namely the defense of lives and property, it was also a result of the fear of landed elites that peasants might drift into rebellious organizations, and thus they sought to control community members in order to demobilize them. The paramilitary organizations of Hunan peasant communities were based on the perception of their community elites that their interests differed from or even conflicted with those of the rest of the community. In an era of rebellion, one segment of the community must control the rest to defend its own interests. Thus, instead of common group identity and shared interest, the organizational ideology of Hunan paramilitary organizations was control and dominance within communities. Propertied and nonpropertied members shared no interests. Organizational control in these communities emphasizes coercive power. The communal organizations are maintained by the use or threat of physical sanctions. Members who do not follow organizational rules and norms can be punished by the organization. In Hunan, the communal organizational framework was maintained by an internal police system. According to Etzioni, organizations using coercive power for control generate strong alienative psychological attachment toward the organization. Members experience strong negative feelings about their relationship with the organization.9

9.

Ibid.

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The community police system in Hunan used a group responsibility control method. Households were divided into groups with collective responsibility for wrongdoing and failure to comply with rules. Punishment could be severe. The paramilitary organizations had the power to willfully arrest, try, imprison, or even kill anyone who did not follow the rules. In peasant communities with imposed communal cooperation, decision making is characterized by dictatorial rule by elites. Elites are usually the rich and powerful in communities. In such communities organizational processes are closed. In the Hunan case, the landed class imposed and controlled the paramilitary organizations. Peasants had no access to community decision making, and their interests were not reflected in community decisions. The leaders of communal organizations came almost entirely from the landed class that created the organization. In many places the charter of paramilitary organizations specifically noted that organizational leaders must be from the landed gentry class. The pattern became even more clear in the early Republican era when these organizations became completely controlled by the so-called bad gentry and local bullies. The powerlessness of peasants and the dominance of the landed elites in the paramilitary organizations of Hunan explain why these organizations openly degenerated into instruments of class rule and exploitation. This type of community organizational framework benefits only the elite members. Redistributive mechanisms extract wealth from the rest of the community for the sole benefit of elite members. These communities, because they are organized through coercive force, do not see social and economic differences among members as a threat to organizational cohesion. Instead, the elites abuse their power to exploit the rest of the community. The extensive powers of Hunan paramilitary organizations to levy tax, extract rents, and manage local public funds all served the class interests of landed elites. These organizations operated extractive redistributive mechanisms. The landed elites expanded the powers of the organizations into many areas of the local economy. The paramilitary organizations, as has been discussed, offered the landed class, for the first time, the means to directly settle rent-related disputes with peasants through coercive force. They also became a tax collection agency for the state, through which the landed elites could benefit through commissions and embezzlement. The organizations also directly imposed many taxes and levies on communities under all kinds of pretexts. Finally, many organizations even forced communities to let them handle local public funds for schools and public works. Landed elites again could benefit from this power through corruption and embezzlement. Thus, the economic extraction system of Hunan paramilitary organizations served to concentrate wealth within communities. The elite members utilized the organization to exploit the rest of the community.

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In sum, peasants living in communities organized by imposed cooperative institutions are predisposed to perceive their community organizational framework as unfair and illegitimate. Only coercive force permits the continued existence and operation of the illegitimate community cooperative institutions. Various historical materials indeed revealed peasants’ anger toward repression by the paramilitary rural political structure in Hunan. According to a petition delegation of Hunan’s people, “The bad gentries of the landed class represent the lower-tier of warlords’ rule. They monopolize political power in the rural areas through tuan-fang organizations [as tuan-lian was called in the early Republican era] and use them to murder peasants, impose heavy taxes, and issue predatory loans.”10 A statement by the CCP Hunan Party Committee in March 1927 also identified landlord-controlled paramilitary organizations as a main source of peasants’ discontent. As it pointed out, “Bad gentry among the landlords savagely exploit rural areas. They must control rural political power to sustain the interests derived from their exploitation. For this, they have taken control of tuan-fang and use it as a military instrument to repress peasants.”11 In December 1926, the First Congress of Hunan Peasant Representatives was convened, and its resolution began with an indictment of political repression and economic exploitation by landlord-controlled tuan-fang. The beginning section of the resolution listed dozens of specific cases in various counties of Hunan that involved tuan-fang abusing its power to repress peasants and exploit them. These cases ranged from tuan-fang murdering peasant protesters to their theft of local public funds, imposition of onerous taxes and levies, and sheer extortion.12

Explaining the Peasant Revolutionary Patterns in Hunan and Jiangxi This study argues that agrarian revolutions can be caused by peasants’ attempts to restructure the organizational principles of their communities. Peasants consider some communal organizational orders fair and legitimate while others not. Agrarian rebellions can be caused by peasants’ attempts to overthrow unfair and illegitimate organizational orders and create new rules of community cooperation. Since illegitimate communal organizational orders are maintained by coercive power, when events beyond the community level open political spaces for peasants and lower the cost of collective action, a community-level organizational rebellion may ensue. However, 10. Hunan People’s Petition Delegation, 1927, “The Real Situation of Peasant Movements in Hunan: A Report by Hunan People’s Petition Delegation,” June, Hunan lishi ziliao (HLZ), Vol. 1 (1981), p. 144. 11. See CCP Hunan Party Committee, 1927c, “A Statement by the CCP Hunan Party Committee on the Peasant Movement in Hunan,” March, HLZ, Vol. 2 (1980), p. 110. 12. First Congress of Hunan Peasant Representatives, 1926, “The Resolution of the First Congress of Hunan Peasant Representatives,” December, HLZ, Vol. 2 (1980), pp. 9–12.

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if peasants perceive their communal orders to be fair and legitimate, they should have few incentives to restructure the organizational principles of their communities. As a result, community-level rebellion is a difficult process even if outside organizations exercise strong and direct mobilization. This organizational perspective on agrarian revolution explains the puzzle presented by the peasant revolutions in Jiangxi and Hunan. Communal Organizational Illegitimacy and the Peasant Revolution in Hunan When a Nationalist and Communist coalition liberated Hunan from reactionary warlord rule, it opened a large political space favorable to a rural-based revolutionary movement. With this new political opportunity, a great peasant revolution broke out in the Hunan countryside. Peasants in fact seized the opportunity to overthrow an exploitative and repressive communal organizational order that centered on paramilitary institutions. As mentioned in Chapter 1, the rural revolution of Hunan spread like wildfire. According to a report by the CCP Hunan Party Committee in February 1927, the number of peasants belonging to peasant associations had quickly risen to 2 million by the end of 1926.13 The report also acknowledged the spontaneous nature of the revolution by revealing the limited involvement of cadres of both the CCP and the KMT, its political ally. For example, the report said that the number of cadres of both parties involved at the xiang level (the administrative unit above villages) was merely 0.5 per xiang! This implies that revolution at the village level was spontaneously initiated by peasants themselves.14 Because of the centrality of political dictatorship by the landed class through their control of paramilitary organizations, the peasant revolution in Hunan was above all an organizational revolution. It sought to destroy the organized repression and exploitation maintained by the paramilitary institutions. Thus, the most prominent feature of the peasant revolution in Hunan was that it was politically dominated. For some time the economic struggles of the Hunan peasant revolution were fairly moderate and were restricted to lower rent rates and better tenancy rules. Radical economic action such as land redistribution only occurred at a later stage of the revolution. In contrast, the political organizational revolution was prominent. Therefore, when the important First Congress of Hunan Peasant Representatives opened in December 1926 and issued a resolution, political demands were the first listed. In the subsection on rural self-governance, it was stated that the tuan-fang system had become the institution by which 13. CCP Hunan Party Committee, 1927a, “A Report by the CCP Hunan Party Committee on the Peasant Movement in Hunan in January,” February, HLZ, Vol. 2 (1980), p. 78. 14. Ibid., p. 80.

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the landlord class rules peasants in collaboration with the warlords. . . . The landlord class uses tuan-fang to repress the good and weak, interrogate and kill the innocent, embezzle public funds, and impose heavy taxes and levies.  .  .  . This organization of the feudal class is the real bedrock of imperialism and warlordism. The current peasant movement is exactly a movement in which democratic forces rise to destroy this feudal force.15

As the peasant delegation of Guiyang County stated, under the rule of tuan-fang and those bad gentry who controlled them, peasants dared not speak. “Thus the demand of liberalization became of the foremost urgency for peasants.”16 The delegation of Xiangtan County reported, “Peasants understand that local bullies and bad gentry as well as their controlled tuan-fang are the biggest enemies of peasants and must be first smashed up.”17 Because of the central importance of communal organizational change, the first action of the Hunan peasant revolution was to establish a new community cooperative institution, the peasant associations. As aforementioned, by the end of 1926 the membership of peasant associations had reached 2 million. Given that only the head of a family formally signed up as a member, it was estimated by the CCP that the total number of peasants under the influence of peasant associations in Hunan could be around 10 million, about one-third of the total population of the province at the time.18 Peasant associations first grabbed political power from the landed class and established their own hegemony. According to a CCP document in April 1927, “Peasant associations have become not only an economic organization of peasants but also an organ for political struggle. In towns and xiang where peasants possess forceful presence, peasant associations have monopolized power. Various old rural political organs have ceased to be functional.”19 Another CCP document of February 1927 claimed that “landlords and bad gentry that used to repress peasants are no longer in charge of rural affairs. The country either resembles anarchy or experiences the dictatorship by peasant associations.”20 Peasant associations pursued a number of initiatives to ensure their political dominance in rural areas. They sought out gentry and landlords with notorious records of repression and exploitation for public humiliation, even shooting some of them.

15. See First Congress of Hunan Peasant Representatives, 1926, p. 13. 16. He Han, 1926, “A Report on the Peasant Movement in Guiyang County,” HLZ, Vol. 1 (1980), p. 128. 17. Xiangtan Peasant Association, 1926a, “A Report on the Peasant Movement in Xiangtan County,” HLZ, Vol. 1 (1980), p. 138. 18. See CCP Hunan Party Committee, 1927b, “CCP Hunan Party Committee: A Plan for the Development of Party Organizations among Peasants,” HLZ, Vol. 2 (1980), p. 83. 19. CCP Hunan Party Committee, 1927d, “A Statement by the CCP Hunan Party Committee Calling for an Assembly of the People of the Province,” April 1927, HLZ, Vol. 1 (1981), p. 98. 20. CCP Hunan Party Committee, 1927a, p. 83.

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In many places, such as Liuyang, Xiangyin, Yiyang, Liling, Xinhua, Anren, Xueyang, Baoqing, and Taoyuan, county-level peasant associations even set up “special courts” to indict and prosecute bad gentry and landlords.21 To consolidate their political dominance in the rural areas, peasant associations inevitably had to weaken and even eliminate the old paramilitary organizations that used to buttress the power of the landed class. In many places, peasant associations disarmed local tuan-fang.22 In other places, such as Liuyang, tuan-fang surrendered their guns to peasant associations.23 However, as recorded, in some places the landed class tried to put up a fight with the tuan-fang they controlled.24 As the Hunan Peasant Association recorded, tuan-fang in these places refused to surrender to peasants and even used force against them. In April 1927, to counter the resistance by the residual tuan-fang, the Hunan Peasant Association ordered local-level associations to establish Peasant Self-Defense Forces at the level of xiang and above.25 Mao’s field study offers the best single analysis of political dominance of peasant associations. As he observed, “After the peasants are organized, they first smash the political influence and power of the landlord class.”26 According to Mao, members of the landed class were punished according to the severity of their bad deeds in the old days. The punishments ranged from public parades to eviction, imprisonment, and execution. Mao also noticed that the old community organizational structure of tuan-fang quickly collapsed. As he found, after “the power and influence of the landlord class have been largely overthrown, such organs of rural administration have naturally collapsed. The phrase ‘down and out’ certainly describes the fate of the old organs of rural administration.”27 The chiefs of tuan and du (higher-order tuan at the district level) now had to refer all matters to peasant associations and put people off with the remark, “It’s none of my business.” With the political dominance of peasant associations, the old rural social organizational structures either surrendered to peasant associations or were disarmed and disbanded totally. In many counties tuan-fang

21. Hunan minbao, 1927, “Various Counties Establishing Special Courts,” April 11, HLZ, Vol. 2 (1981), pp. 73–74. 22. See Xiang Nong, 1926, “The Peasant Movement in Hunan,” November 30, HLZ, Vol. 1 (1980), p. 118. 23. See Hunan minbao, 1927, “Tuan-fang in Liuyang Transferred Guns to the Peasant Associations,” April 10, HLZ, Vol. 1 (1981), p. 108. 24. See Hunan Peasant Association, 1927a, “A Report by the Hunan Peasant Association on the Changing Balance of Power between Feudal and Democratic Forces in the Hunan Countryside,” February, HLZ, Vol. 2 (1980), pp. 66–67. 25. See Hunan Peasant Association, 1927c, “Hunan Peasant Association Ordering the Creation of SelfDefense Force,” Hunan minbao, April 14, HLZ, Vol. 2 (1981), p. 98. 26. Mao Tse-tung, 1927, “An Investigation Report on the Peasant Movements in Hunan,” in Mao Tse-tung ji, Vol. 1, p. 226. 27. Ibid., pp. 231–32.

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pledged allegiance to peasant associations. The new leaders were elected by the communities or were simply selected by peasant associations.28 In addition to establishing political dominance in rural areas, peasant associations also pursued changes of the old economic order. A basic measure involved the ban on export of rice to other provinces, even between counties within Hunan. The purpose was to keep rice prices in the province low so that poor peasants could afford it. According to one report, peasant associations at all levels imposed this ban. In fact, they developed a passport system for rice transportation between counties inside Hunan and between Hunan and other provinces.29 To export rice out of an area or the province, merchants had to have their passports stamped by peasant associations. To further help poor peasants, peasant associations also established grain depots that distributed food to the truly needy. Typically, it was peasant associations at xiang level that established and maintained these grain depots. Peasant associations also forced landlords to donate rice to be sold to poor peasants at the lowest possible price.30 More significant economic actions related to rent reduction and the elimination of rent deposits. Gradually and inevitably, the land issue began to emerge. As discussed in Chapter 1, peasant associations in many places began to confiscate the land of landlords and redistribute it to peasants. These actions went beyond the political limit set by the CCP-KMT alliance. In fact, because the CCP was so concerned that its coalition with the Nationalists might be in jeopardy, it called upon its local organizations to stop the spontaneous actions of peasant associations. However, the Hunan Peasant Association still pushed for land reforms. As it stated in April 1927, “While rent reduction is the first step toward the liberalization of peasants, resolving the land issue constitutes the final goal of the peasant movement.” Indeed, “The landlord system must be eliminated as it is the bedrock of the feudal system.”31 A petition delegation that represented the peasants of Hunan also stated that their most urgent need concerned the “nationalization of land.” According to the delegation, “While a peasant may support the revolution with great sincerity, he nonetheless does not forget this goal for the revolution.”32 Although the CCP-KMT coalition did not permit peasants to resolve the land issue by themselves, they did it anyway in some places. According to one report, in Xianing xiang near Changsha, peasants confiscated the land from landlords for redistribution. Each adult peasant was entitled to a lot that could produce eight shi of grain. Younger 28. Li Weihan, 1927, “The Future of the Hunan Revolution,” Zhanshi zhoubao, April 17, HLZ, Vol. 1 (1981), p. 127. 29. Zhi Xun, 1928, “A Recollection on the Hunan Peasant Revolution,” Bu’ershiweike, January 2, HLZ, Vol. 2 (1981), pp. 115–16. 30. Ibid., p. 116. 31. Hunan Peasant Association, 1927a, p. 140. 32. Hunan People’s Petition Delegation, 1927, p. 148.

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people, based on age, were entitled to a piece of land producing between four and six shi of grain.33 Because of increasing radicalization of the peasant revolution in Hunan, the CCP tried to search for ways to avoid the collapse of its coalition with the KMT. One solution was to dilute peasant associations’ political dominance by involving the participation of the petty bourgeois in local governance. Indeed, many members of the KMT and its officers came from petty-bourgeois backgrounds. According to an instruction issued by the CCP Hunan Committee in February 1926, While it is a good thing to see peasants grabbing power from the feudal classes, we must also make them realize that we are at the stage of a nationalist revolution, not a socialist revolution of worker-peasant dictatorship. They must realize that such a nationalist revolution requires a broad revolutionary coalition. Based on the united front strategy of the party, the current dictatorship by peasants in rural areas should change to a new form. This new form requires the promotion of democratic governance that involves the participation of petty bourgeois so that they will no longer be afraid of the peasant movement. The specific method for democratic politics is the implementation of rural self-governance.34

This shows that the peasants of Hunan waged a spontaneous and increasingly ferocious agrarian revolution that smashed the rural landed class and its political power. As various CCP documents and Mao’s report recounted, peasant associations effectively established political dictatorship in the rural areas of Hunan. However, peasant associations were not just the dominant new political organizations in rural communities but also the new communal cooperative institutions entrusted with a broad range of authority and power. Peasant associations reflected the wishes of peasants to build a new communal organizational order that regulates and coordinates a wide range of community affairs with justice and fairness. For example, the First Congress of Hunan Peasant Representatives, convened in December 1926, stated in its resolution that the peasant revolution was in fact “a  peasant democratic movement in the rural areas” that sought to overthrow the rule by “privileged classes.”35 From this angle, the peasant revolution was an attempt to establish a democratic and cooperative governance framework in rural Hunan. As stated by the Peasant Association of Hunan, “The so-called rural disturbances are really peasant revolutionary actions to eliminate the lower-level feudal forces. They have smashed these feudal forces and opened a bright road toward democratic governance.”36

33. Zhi Xun, 1928, p. 119. 34. CCP Hunan Party Committee, 1927e, “A Notice by the CCP Hunan Party Committee about How to Realize Rural Democratic Governments,” February 16, HLZ, Vol. 2 (1980), p. 85. 35. First Congress of Hunan Peasant Representatives, 1926, p. 13. 36. Hunan Peasant Association, 1927a, pp. 137–38.

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The CCP Hunan Party Committee took notice of peasants’ desire for a new and democratic governance framework that centered on peasant associations. As it stated, peasant associations and their extensive activities “show the urge of people to participate in the management of political power. In fact, they are already actively taking part in the management of politics.”37 As one report accounted, “In the past, it was the local eminent persons [referring to the landed gentry] who run the rural affairs. Bare-footed peasants could only listen from outside the doors. Now, the peasants of Hunan, because of the peasant movement, have learned how to conduct meetings. In the past, it was local eminent persons who held meetings to manage peasants. The world has been turned upside down. Peasants now meet to manage those eminent persons.”38 According to the report, peasant associations now managed communal affairs according to the common interests of all. For example, local public funds, which had been controlled by bad gentry, were now supervised by peasant associations. If local roads needed to be expanded, peasant associations would formulate a plan and hire laborers to complete the construction. Landlords were then ordered to provide food to the laborers.39 Indeed, peasant associations became the new communal cooperative institution that regulated many kinds of activities in the community, including adjudication, public works, and enforcement of community rules and moral standards. As Mao Tse-tung vividly put it, “Peasant associations making a fart will have some impact. . . . Even such small issues as fights between husbands and wives have to be settled by peasant associations. Nothing can be done without the presence of representatives from peasant associations.”40 Peasant associations used this power to effectively organize many communal cooperative activities. As numerous reports during the revolution noted, they organized communities to build roads, bridges, and irrigation facilities. With such success, “even those diehard landlords have to secretly express admiration.”41 They also organized peasants to suppress the chronic bandit problem in Hunan. Because of peasant associations’ extensive networks, the campaigns were like a “people’s war,” and bandits had nowhere to hide. As Mao Tse-tung found, “Many places no longer experience even burglary problems. Although burglary still exists in the counties I visited, all the places I went to no longer have bandit problems.”42 Peasant associations also organized night schools to educate poor peasants. These “peasant schools”

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

CCP Hunan Party Committee, 1927c, p. 98. Zhi Xun, 1928, p. 117. Ibid., p. 118. Mao, 1927, p. 209. See Hunan People’s Petition Delegation, 1927, p. 147. Mao, 1927, p. 245.

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were financed with forced donations from landlords and with local public funds that had been used for community ritual services, and they were free to peasants.43 In regulating moral behaviors, peasant associations also exercised strong regulatory powers. Opium for the first time was effectively banned by peasant associations. The old Hunan government had also banned the use of opium but without any effect. Now, peasant associations used their extensive organizational networks to monitor and punish those who used opium. Those found using opium were publicly paraded and fined. The associations also set up many checkpoints on major routes to other provinces to stop the smuggling of opium. As a result, during the revolution opium use almost completely disappeared in the rural areas.44 The associations also used their power to stop gambling in rural areas. Members of the Children’s Corp searched every household for gambling tools. As a result, during the revolution gambling practice also disappeared in the countryside. Peasant associations in some places in Hunan even prohibited binding women’s feet and raised the social and political status of women. They encouraged women to join peasant associations and to work in the fields and factories. Mao recorded that in some places women were encouraged by peasant associations to organize their own women’s associations. With this liberalization of the treatment of women, Mao found that more liberal sexual relationships and many “triangular relationships” began to develop in rural areas.45 Finally, peasant associations also took on the feudal superstitious and religious establishment. “In many places temples were occupied by peasant associations as their meeting place. Almost everywhere peasant associations confiscated parts of temple properties to be used as funds for schools and association expenses.” As Mao said, usually “only the old and women believe in gods. No young and middle-aged peasants believe in them. Thus overthrowing religious and superstitious orders takes place in many places.”46 In sum, peasant associations actually became the dominant cooperative institution that created a new and legitimate communal organizational order. Peasants entrusted them with the power and authority to build a fair and just social, political, and economic order in their communities. The extensive membership of Hunan peasant associations and their extremely rapid growth demonstrated the confidence of peasants in this new community organization and their desire to promote fair and just intracommunity relationships. Impressively, outside revolutionary organizations had little to do with the vast development of peasant associations and their dominance in community affairs. 43. 44. 45. 46.

Ibid. For more discussions on the opium ban in Hunan’s rural areas, see Li Weihan, 1927, p. 128. Mao, 1927, p. 237. Ibid.

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As Chapter 1 discusses, the CCP was then a small political force with very weak rural organizational structures. As a 1927 CCP document revealed, the party at the time had only 2,400 members in Hunan, 1,700 of them in rural areas. As this document stated, “Now there are about 10 million peasants under the influence of peasant associations. This is to say, there is only one comrade among thousands of peasants. How can we lead [the peasant revolution]? This problem is very severe.”47 Communal Organizational Legitimacy and the Peasant Revolution in Jiangxi In contrast to the situation in Hunan, the organizational context of rural communities of southern Jiangxi seriously constrained the revolutionary behavior of their peasants even though the CCP completely created and mobilized the revolution. While illegitimate community organizational order in rural Hunan caused a spontaneous peasant revolution, legitimate community organizational order in Jiangxi caused conservative peasant behaviors in the CCP-mobilized revolution. A patrilineally defined community organizational framework is considered legitimate because its ideologies, processes, and outcomes formally treat all members equally. Community members thus consider their organizational contexts just and fair. As a result, there are few dynamics to restructure the existing communal organizational orders. This explains why the response of Jiangxi peasants to the revolution was conservative in comparison to Hunan peasants’ spontaneity even though the Communist Party was much more involved in Jiangxi. As described in Chapter 1, peasants’ behaviors in Jiangxi were conservative by several measures. For example, local-level revolutionary organizations were controlled by the rural upper classes for a long time. In addition to Mao’s own finding discussed in Chapter 1, other CCP documents recorded this problem. A 1931 CCP report noticed the serious problem of poor peasants not taking control of local-level revolutionary bodies: The leadership issue facing the soviet regime remains serious. This problem originated from the fact that it was the Red Army that created the soviet regime in Jiangxi. When the Red Army arrived in the region, it was rich peasants and hooligans who first responded. Poor peasants did not rise up instead. Therefore, until recently the power organs were completely controlled by rich peasants and hooligans. The leadership positions of Soviets are mainly controlled by rich peasants.48

A 1930 CCP report on western Jiangxi pointed out the dire consequences of this problem. Because of rich peasants’ control of local-level revolutionary organs, the land revolution in the soviet area faced difficulties. For example, these local-level 47. CCP Hunan Party Committee, 1927b, p. 83. 48. Ouyang Xin, 1931, “A Report on the Central Soviet Areas,” September 3, Zhongyang geming genjudi shiliao xuanbian (ZGGSX), Vol. 1, p. 377.

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leaders opposed the CCP policy of equal distribution of land among peasants, as they themselves possessed land that would be deemed excess under this policy. The report thus urged the party to accelerate “the transfer of leadership from rich peasants to poor peasants and agricultural laborers” so as to complete the land reform.49 Moreover, peasants showed great unwillingness to take part in the revolutionary process despite strong and exclusive incentives. Chapter 1 documents the difficulty of the CCP in recruiting peasants into the Red Army and their widespread desertion. Indeed, the party had to rely on coercive means, deceptions, as well as bribes, to expand its military. According to a 1933 report on the western Fujian part of the Jiangxi Soviet Republic, desertions by peasant recruits became rampant. For example, a regiment of 1,000 men recruited from Ninghua saw most deserted on the way to Fusheng, with just 200 left. A battalion from Sidu saw 200 new recruits deserting. Typically, a battalion’s manpower ranged from 300 to 400.50 Even though the party faced serious recruitment and desertion problems, this CCP report warned against using crude measures to expand the Red Army. As it stated, the party “should patiently conduct widespread and deep political mobilization and resolutely avoid methods that rely on coercion, deception, and bribes.”51 However, the report noticed that many local party organizations continued to use these methods to expand the Red Army: Many “did not make diligent efforts but instead rely on approaches like coercion, deception, and bribes. For example, the local party committee of Hongfang xiang in the Xinqiao District said those not joining the Red Army are antiparty. In some places meetings are called and do not end until people have signed up.”52 In addition to reluctance to join the Red Army, peasants also showed a lack of interest in joining the CCP. According to a 1933 CCP report on the state of its organizations in Jiangxi, the party faced difficulties in reaching its goal of doubling party membership in May, June, and July of 1933. Based on the data from fourteen counties, “the targets for May aborted, while the situations of June and July were even worse. Judged by the numbers of May, June, and July, only three counties reached or exceeded the targets.”53 According to this report, the CCP tried the “one comrade bringing in a new comrade” strategy to double the membership of the party. However, this strategy failed to involve enough interested peasants. When local party cadres tried to recruit 49. Zhang Huaiwan, 1930, “An Inspection Report by Zhang Huaiwan about Southwestern Jiangxi,” April 5, ZGGSX, Vol. 1, pp. 191–92. 50. CCP Fujian Provincial Party Committee, 1933, “A Work Report of the CCP Fujian Provincial Party Committee,” October 26, ZGGSX, Vol. 1, p. 505. 51. Ibid., p. 520. 52. Ibid., p. 506. 53. CCP Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee, 1933, “The State of Party Organizations,” September 22, ZGGSX, Vol. 1, p. 676.

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peasants, the latter often rebuked them by saying, “It makes no difference whether I am a party member or not.”54 Even worse, peasants were unwilling to participate even in the land revolution. After three years of land revolution in southern Jiangxi, the Communist Party found that the land problem had not been settled in 80% of the base areas. As a result the party had to launch a second land revolution, the Land Investigation Campaign. Many Communist Party documents revealed the great difficulty of undertaking an agrarian revolution in a legitimate community organizational context in southern Jiangxi. As a 1932 report by the CCP Jiangxi Soviet Area Provincial Party Committee observed, “The landlord class uses lineage corporate land to distribute parts of their income to poor lineage members and uses lineage funds to support the education of lineage kids. As a result, peasants hold strong lineage ideology and compromise with the landlords of their lineages.”55 Moreover, peasants in many places in southern Jiangxi openly resisted the revolution in defense of their community organizations. As a report by Chen Yi to the Party Center revealed, “Many peasants, to defend lineages, stand out to oppose dividing grain and property. We can neither shoot them nor jail them. If we shoot them, some bad influence may occur. If we let them go, they have indeed committed antirevolutionary actions.”56 This conservative peasant behavior is not surprising at all because even local-level revolutionary organs were subsumed within larger lineage organizational structures. As Yang Kemin noted in a report, “In every village and every party committee, when party organizations hold meetings, they are like lineage conferences. The same is also true with soviet organizations.”57 The soviet organizations were the governmental organs of the Jiangxi Soviet Republic. Thus, as Yang concluded, “Why revolutionary forces are weaker than the feudal forces in rural areas is because feudal lineage forces are stronger than revolutionary forces.”58 The local-level revolutionary organs subsumed within the lineage organizations were themselves against fundamentally restructuring the existing community organizational frameworks and the socioeconomic orders they maintained. The Red Army came to Jiangxi from other provinces. It was this outside revolutionary force that organized and implemented a top-down rural revolution in Jiangxi. However, local party organizations were against deepening the revolution. For a period, they 54. Ibid., p. 677. 55. For this 1932 report, see the CCP Jiangxi Soviet Area Provincial Party Committee, 1932, “A Work Summary by the Jiangxi Soviet Area Provincial Party Committee,” ZGGSX, Vol. 1, p. 445. 56. See Chen Yi, 1929, “Chen Yi’s Report on the History and Situation of Zhu-Mao Forces,” ZZWX, Vol. 5, p. 766. 57. See Yang Kemin, 1929, “A Comprehensive Report on the Situation in the Hunan-Jiangxi Border Soviet Area,” ZGGSX, Vol. 1, p. 14. 58. Ibid.

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opposed a radical land revolution that would redistribute all community land. In a joint conference by the Red Army and local party organizations in February 1929, the Red Army supported this radical policy. Mao Tse-tung strongly criticized the slow pace of local organizations in the land revolution and argued that “the inaction in land redistribution is a very opportunistic policy.” Local party organizations, however, proposed a policy that confiscated and redistributed only the land of “reactionary” landlords and the “surplus” land of rich peasants, arguing that corporate land should not be redistributed to peasants.59 Although the policy of the Red Army was finally adopted because of its military hegemony in the region, local party organizations still resisted and compromised the land revolution during the implementation stage. Thus, in 1933 after three years of land revolution, the CCP found that the land problem had not been settled in 80% of the base areas. The failure of the land revolution in patrilineally organized communities taught the CCP that other strategies were necessary to defeat the existing communal organizations. The CCP recognized that an education campaign was needed to raise the class consciousness of peasants. This would make them understand that lineage members were socially and economically unequal. The ideology of common identity promoted by lineages was simply a deception used by the rural upper classes to hide its political and economic dominance. The party hoped that an educational campaign would facilitate deepening its rural revolution. When the Communist Party launched the Land Investigation Campaign in June 1933, its real goal, according to Mao, was to investigate classes, not redistribute land.60 As a resolution on the Land Investigation Campaign declared, the movement “must use widespread propaganda in all villages to explain to peasants its necessity. . . . It is particularly important to make it clear to peasants who were landlords, rich peasants, and middle peasants. There should be more than one such village meeting, especially in those conservative villages.”61 This quotation shows that peasants in patrilineally organized communities had little perception of social differentiation among community members. To overcome resistance from village communities, the CCP during the Land Investigation Campaign adopted a special policy of using agricultural labor as the vanguard of the movement. In all previous and subsequent peasant revolutions, poor peasants and agricultural labor were treated equally as the vanguards of rural

59. For more information about this conference, see Zhang Huaiwan, 1930, pp. 198–99. 60. Mao Tse-tung, 1933a, “A Speech at the Meeting on the Land Investigation Campaign for Officials above the Level of District Soviets in Eight Counties,” in Mao Tse-tung ji, Vol. 3. 61. See the Chinese Soviet Republic, 1933b, “The Resolution of the Meeting on the Land Investigation Campaign for Officials above the Level of District Soviets in Eight Counties,” ZGGSX, Vol. 3, p. 488. The author was believed to be Mao Tse-tung.

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revolutions. However, in the Jiangxi revolution, agricultural labor was singled out since poor peasants were members of the community organization while agricultural laborers were not. They were hired from outside the community to work on seasonal or temporary bases. Thus, Mao stipulated that the operational strategy of Land Investigation Campaign “was to use workers [agricultural labor] as leaders, rely on poor peasants, and unite middle peasants to weaken rich peasants and destroy landlords.”62 As a resolution on the movement emphasized, “As to the leading role of agricultural labor, it is to let them establish Agricultural Labor Small Groups and from there to unite the activists among poor peasants and develop the Poor Peasants Corp to push forward the Land Investigation Campaign.”63 As an incentive to lead the movement, the resolution specifically stipulated that “when dividing confiscated properties, agricultural labor must be the first beneficiary.”64 However, this policy of using community outsiders to deepen the land revolution also failed. As revealed by Mao, agricultural laborers were not welcomed by village communities and were resisted. Poor Peasants Corps in many places refused to let agricultural laborers join and lead them. This occurred even in Ruijin County, where the CCP and the Red Army were headquartered. The policy of using agricultural labor to deepen the land revolution failed to be implemented in lineage-dominated village communities. As Mao complained, “The closed-door policy of Poor Peasants Corps and overlooking the leading role of agricultural labor are wrong.”65 As observed by Yuan I in his study of the CCP revolution in Jiangxi, “A rural society with strong lineage cohesion does not suddenly accept Communist leadership,” and the CCP had to “undermine the established power structure.”66 However, as he concludes, the Land Investigation Campaign was eventually not successful as a result of opposition by lineage-based communities in southern Jiangxi and western Fujian. According to him, “Many peasants presented false evidence at meetings to show that people classified by the CCP as landlords and rich peasants were really middle peasants or poor peasants, and outsiders could not overcome communal loyalties.”67 The CCP recognized the challenge of land reform in lineage-centered village communities. In many places local party organizations decided to conduct land reforms at the xiang level, which was the administrative unit above villages. This strategy was designed to allow the CCP to diffuse the resistance from lineage-centered 62. 63. 64. 65.

Mao Tse-tung, 1933a. See Chinese Soviet Republic, 1933b, p. 487. Ibid. Mao Tse-tung, 1933b, “A Preliminary Summary of the Land Investigation Campaign,” in Mao Tsetung ji, Vol. 3, p. 349. 66. Yuan I, “Reinventing Mao’s Peasant Revolution Theory: Agrarian Structure and Peasant Power in Pre-1949 South China,” Issues & Studies, Vol. 33, No. 7 (1997), p. 32. 67. Ibid., p. 34.

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communities. As stated by a CCP document of 1931, “It is more appropriate to use xiang as a unit to redistribute land, as this approach can achieve better results by overcoming feudal lineage relationships. The outcomes are more equal redistribution of land.”68

Summary In sum, the organizational contexts of rural communities in Hunan and Jiangxi critically defined peasants’ behavioral patterns in the two revolutions. An illegitimate communal order in Hunan caused peasants to restructure the organizational principles of their communities when a nationalist revolution opened up political space. Peasants spontaneously established a new community cooperative institution, peasant associations, to build a fair and just communal cooperative order. The new peasant associations were entrusted with a wide range of powers to control and regulate community political, social, and economic affairs. In contrast, a legitimate communal organizational order in Jiangxi caused conservative peasant behaviors during a CCP-created revolution. Peasants, even under strong mobilizing pressure from outside revolutionary organizations, were unwilling to restructure the existing organizational principles that defined a wide range of community affairs.

68. CCP Southwestern Jiangxi Party Committee, “A Comprehensive Report by the Southwestern Jiangxi Party Committee,” September 20, 1930, ZGGSX, Vol. 1, p. 415.

7 An Organizational Theory of Agrarian Revolutions

This final chapter elaborates an organizational theory of agrarian revolutions. It also draws broader conclusions about the study of agrarian revolutions in general and the Chinese revolution in particular.

A Two-Level Perspective Drawing from the different revolutionary patterns in Hunan and Jiangxi, this study suggests an alternative theory of agrarian revolution that focuses on the organizational frameworks of peasant communities. It argues that agrarian revolutions can be caused by peasants’ attempts to restructure unfair and illegitimate community organizational orders. Essentially, these attempts are organizational rebellions to build new and just communal organizational principles. Therefore, I interpret some agrarian revolutions as organizational phenomena. However, community-level rebellion needs larger favorable political circumstances to be translated into agrarian revolution. This condition can be created either by state breakdown and wars or by outside revolutionary organizations. The larger favorable political context is important for agrarian revolutions for two reasons. First, an agrarian revolution is characterized by its size and supralocal impact. A community-sized rebellion is not an agrarian revolution. Only simultaneous organizational rebellion by many communities can generate supralocal impact. Only large events can create a political space big enough for many communities to rebel in. Second, a larger favorable political situation creates the opportunity for peasants to rebel at the community level. This is a structural insight emphasized by Skocpol, who argues that causal analyses of conditions for revolutions “certainly have to examine configuration of conditions.”1 Different configurations of conditions create different possibilities for revolutions. As Skocpol points out, state administrative-military breakdown from above is critical for peasant revolutions:

1.

Theda Skocpol, Social Revolutions in the Modern World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 315.

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Revolutions as Organizational Change Such revolutions have emerged more invariably out of occasionally favorable political situations, shaped in large part by the interstate dynamics of the modern world-capitalist era. For these dynamics have, at crucial conjunctures, weakened indigenous or colonial state controls over the peasantry. Moreover, they have often allowed, even impelled, revolutionary political movements to forge new relationships with the mass of the peasantry. Only in favorable circumstances such as these has the insurrectionary potential of peasants—whether traditionalist or commercializing, landed or landless—actually been able to propel revolutionary transformations.2

As put by Ralph Thaxton in his study of peasant revolution in the Taihang Mountain region of North China, without military-political protection by outside revolutionary organizations, “rebellious peasants will be dragged from their hovels, tortured before their loved ones, and dumped in shallow graves.”3 Therefore, Kathleen Hartford and Steven M. Goldstein argue that studies on the Chinese revolution must seriously incorporate insights from comparative studies on revolutions, including the structural perspective proposed by Skocpol. Specifically, they suggest that a key condition for successful peasant revolution in the Chinese context was the military balance of power between the Communist and counterrevolutionary forces, which critically defined the opportunities and costs for peasant insurrections.4 The Hunan experience convincingly demonstrated the importance of a larger favorable political situation in the making of peasant revolutions. Although peasants suffered under political and economic repressions by the rural upper class and had motives to change their communal organizational orders, landlords and the gentry-controlled militia system effectively denied peasants opportunities to rebel. The Northern Expedition, initiated by the Nationalist-Communist coalition in 1926, created a context of state administrative-military breakdown in Hunan. Peasants quickly seized the larger favorable political conditions and translated them into opportunities for community-level rebellions. The result was simultaneous community-level rebellions in most parts of the province. Because of its supralocal nature, this province-wide peasant movement became a genuine agrarian revolution. A larger favorable political situation facilitates peasant revolutions in other ways as well. Peasants themselves rarely look beyond the local consequences of political actions. Only an outside revolutionary organization can use its supracommunity organizational networks to fuse and connect many local-level rebellions into a regional- or even national-scale revolutionary movement. The county-level and 2. 3. 4.

Theda Skocpol, “What Makes Peasants Revolutionary?” Comparative Politics, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1982), p. 373. Ralph Thaxton, China Turned Upside Down: Revolutionary Legitimacy in the Peasant World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 232. Kathleen Hartford and Steven M. Goldstein, “Introduction: Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution,” in Kathleen Hartford and Steven M. Goldstein, eds., Single Sparks: China’s Rural Revolution (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1989a), pp. 30–33.

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provincial-level peasant associations in Hunan were created by outside revolutionary organizations to provide networks that linked local- and community-level peasant movements into a larger political force. So the organizational perspective of agrarian revolutions, as proposed by this study, involves a two-level process. At the community level peasants must perceive their community organizational order as illegitimate so that they have incentives to wage an organizational rebellion to restructure the relational system in their communities. However, a larger favorable political situation is important to realize this organizational rebellion at the community level and translate it into an agrarian revolution with supralocal impact. Communal rebellions emerge with difficulty since illegitimate community organizational orders are typically maintained through coercive means by the agrarian ruling class, which is supported by the repressive machine of the state. A larger favorable political situation can lower the cost of communitylevel rebellion and create the possibility of many simultaneous rebellions in a wider geographical context. Without any one of the above processes, an agrarian revolution is unlikely to emerge. In the Hunan case, the illegitimate community paramilitary organizations of tuan-lian could effectively maintain their dominance in rural communities for a long time simply through coercive force. Widespread community-level rebellions only occurred when a nationalistic war created favorable circumstances. This war established a vast political space for peasants to overthrow their old community organizational frameworks. Also, the outside revolutionary agents organizationally linked community-level peasant rebellions into a province-wide revolutionary movement with clear national goals of anti-imperialism and antiwarlordism. In the Jiangxi case, however, even though the Communist Red Army enjoyed political and military hegemony in the region and created a larger favorable situation for revolutionary insurrections, a legitimate community organizational context seriously impeded the CCP’s mobilization. As the previous chapter discusses, in many places Jiangxi peasants even openly opposed the revolution in the countryside. As Yuan I puts it, The southern indigenous peasants provided less muscle for the CCP than their northern counterparts: in fact, in many ways they resisted class agitation and class consciousness. The agrarian policy of the Rural Soviet in the 1930s created bitter resentment among southern Chinese peasants toward the CCP, which undercut and rendered Mao’s peasant mobilization strategy impossible.5

This theory therefore incorporates both the opportunity and willingness factors in human actions. Both must be present to realize an agrarian revolution. Opportunity 5.

Yuan I, “Reinventing Mao’s Peasant Revolution Theory: Agrarian Structure and Peasant Power in Pre-1949 South China,” Issues & Studies, Vol. 33, No. 7 (1997), p. 6.

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stands for the possibilities that are available within any environment, while willingness stands for the preferences of individuals or groups and their choices of action from a range of alternatives. Opportunity and willingness require the combination of both structure or environment and choice or decision-making process. This theory thus argues against a deterministic model of social scientific explanations. In the Chinese context, the ubiquitous “organizational weapon” perspective assumes that mobilizations by the CCP would have achieved identical results in different contexts. The experience of Jiangxi decisively disproves it. Although the CCP military-political hegemony in the region created ample opportunities for peasants to reshape their communal orders, their lack of willingness resulted in an uncooperative relationship with the party. In Hunan, by contrast, the combination of both willingness and opportunity factors created an impressive agrarian revolution that exceeded the imagination and goals of outside revolutionary organizations. However, it must be noted that this organizational perspective is not presented as a theory that is capable of explaining all cases of agrarian revolutions. A central conclusion of recent comparative studies of revolutions is that there are not only many forms of revolution but also multiple causes. As Jeff Goodwin writes, this perspective assumes not only that many phenomena that we wish to explain, including revolutions or types of revolutions, have multiple, complex determinants, but also that these phenomena may have very different complexes of determinants. This approach does not assume, in other words, that all revolutions or types of revolutions will have precisely the same cause: there may be multiple paths, so to speak, to the same destination.6

In this context, the organizational approach presented by this study applies only to peasant communities with strong and powerful internal cooperative institutions. As discussed in Chapter 3, Magagna identifies three types of peasant communities: redistributive, regulative, and residual.7 In the last type of communities, communal cooperative institutions either do not exist at all or “play [only] a marginal and episodic role.” Obviously, the utility of the organizational theory is limited to the study of the first two types of peasant communities.

The Centrality of Social Structures This study has demonstrated that the formal organizational context of peasant communities shapes peasants’ political behaviors. This variable, however, has not been 6. 7.

See Jeff Goodwin, “Toward a New Sociology of Revolutions,” Theory & Society, Vol. 23, No. 6 (1994), pp. 731–66. Victor Magagna, Communities of Grain: Rural Rebellion in Comparative Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 252–53.

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analyzed systematically by existing theories of agrarian revolutions. These theories can be classified into two categories by the mechanisms employed in explaining peasant revolutions. One is the cultural-norm approach represented by the moral economy theory. Precapitalist rural communities were governed by a set of traditional norms and values. When this normative system was destroyed by the market economic relationship, peasants resorted to rebellion to express their anger. The other is the rational-intentional approach, best represented by rational choice theory. Peasant revolutions emerge because peasants benefit materially from them. This approach also includes the Marxist class exploitation thesis and structural theory that emphasizes economic relationships. According to the underlying logic of this approach, it is the economic exploitation by the rural upper classes that propels peasants to improve their economic position through revolutionary change. As Daniel Little observes, the Marxist class conflict explanations of peasant rebellion “postulate the strongest kind of collective rationality.”8 These two broad approaches are located at either end of the individual-societal continuum. The rational-intentional approach focuses on individual interest calculations and interprets political actions in terms of conscious individual intentions. The cultural-norm approach focuses on societal norms and values. According to this view, political action, as mediated by societal norms and values, thus “involves a normative component that cannot be reduced to narrow self-interest.”9 The problem with these two approaches is that they fail to appreciate the organizational context of human society that constitutes its broader social structures. In various social contexts, individuals are linked with each other by different kinds of formal organizations. They are coordinated by formal cooperative institutions designed to control complex human relations and expand the domains of human activity. This study focuses on this organizational dimension of human society, which forms part of its broader social structures. Besides being influenced by social norms and individual interests, peasants are also shaped by the social structures in which they are situated and that connect them with each other. Social structures mediate both individuals’ perceptions of justice and their interests. Thus, the same individual situated in different communal organizational contexts not only differently perceives fairness and justice in his or her relationship with others, but also receives different material benefits. By focusing on the mediating role of formal communal cooperative institutions, this study represents a turn from both the cultural-norm and the rational-intentional approaches in the study of agrarian revolutions. This organizational approach also challenges the Marxist economic determinism thesis, which holds that economic relationships determine political actions, as they are based on the position of each class in the relations of production. This is a rationalist 8. 9.

See Daniel Little, Understanding Peasant China (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 178. Ibid., p. 181.

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interpretation of political action because it presumes that each class can rationally assess its economic interests in certain relations of production and fully comprehend the goals and consequences of its political action. This thesis closely links the objective material factors and patterns of political behavior: the economic system creates objective interests for classes, and class members come to recognize their material interests and act to defend or promote these interests. Thus, this approach presumes that the relations of production define class relations, that the exploited segments of rural society have an implicit capacity to perceive the exploitative nature of the current relations of production, and that they are disposed to alter that system. The problem with this approach is that it assumes a direct relationship between the economic position of a group and its political motivation. Political actions, however, are mediated by many other factors including culture, religion, ideology, and social structures. This study argues that in addition to economic relationships, social structures in general and formal relational structures in particular also define people’s perception of interests and thus the perceived need for political action. This study shows that although class exploitation existed in both Hunan and Jiangxi, their peasants interpreted interclass relationships in markedly different ways. This was because peasants were organized through community organizations where interclass relationships were mediated and expressed by different organizational mechanisms. The relational structures of communities interacted with and complemented the economic relationship and thus defined a perception of interclass relationship that was different from the one defined solely by relations of production. Thus, although economic exploitation in Jiangxi was as severe as that in Hunan, Jiangxi rural communities experienced subdued interclass conflict because of their lineage-based community organizational frameworks. Conversely, the paramilitarybased communal organizational context of Hunan created an antagonistic relationship between the landed class and peasants. The difference in revolutionary patterns in Jiangxi and Hunan was the result of the alternate formal relational structures of their rural communities. Economic factors, in terms of relations of production and exploitation, did not determine the different political actions of Jiangxi and Hunan peasants.

Evaluating the Organizational Approach against the Alternatives How does this organizational approach stack up against classic theories of agrarian revolutions? Below, I examine the differences between the organizational approach of this study and other established approaches. The organizational approach focuses on the organizational context of agrarian communities that emerge during communal environmental adaptation. Some agrarian revolutions, then, are organizational rebellions by peasants to restructure

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unfair and illegitimate communal organizational frameworks. In this regard, the theory shares important commonalities with the moral economy approach in its joint emphasis on the roles of anger and sense of injustice in the shaping of peasants’ rebellions. As Scott argues, “Any theory of revolution must make a place for the anger, revenge, and hatred that are so obviously a part of the experience.”10 However, the organizational theory offered by this study has a different causal mechanism from the one used by moral economy theory. The latter argues that the destruction of the old subsistence ethic by the capitalistic market relationship caused peasant rebellions. The moral economy approach thus focuses on precapitalist communal norms and value systems that shaped peasants’ senses of fairness and justice. In contrast, the organizational perspective focuses on the role of formal communal cooperative institutions and how this organizational context offers peasants incentives or disincentives for rebellion. Unjust and illegitimate communal organizational orders motivate peasants to seek organizational changes through rebellion and revolution. The moral economy approach also treats a peasant community as a whole and analyzes rural rebellion as a collective action by the entire community against the outside world. The organizational approach does not view peasant communities as a harmonious whole. Rather, it treats some peasant rebellions as an internal process to reshape community organizational frameworks. It recognizes that peasant communities may be internally divided through unequal relationships between those who control communal cooperative institutions and those who do not. An organizational rebellion arises when the majority of the community members seek to overthrow organizational dominance by an exploitative minority. The organizational approach also overcomes the narrow utilitarian concerns of rational choice theory. The theory argues that peasants rebel only when outside revolutionary organizations can offer them concrete material benefits. Rational choice theory particularly downplays the role of discontent and a sense of injustice as a cause of agrarian revolution. Only rational calculation of material gains from the revolutionary process propels peasants to participate in the process. However, as Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley argues in his study of peasant insurgency in Latin America, “the sense of moral outrage” is central to peasants’ decisions to join revolutionary organizations.11 According to the organizational approach of this study, peasants must perceive the current organizational context as unfair and unjust before they consider reshaping it. Apart from this normative and moral judgment, material incentives alone cannot

10. James Scott, “Peasant Revolution: A Dismal Science,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1977), p. 240. 11. Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley, Exploring Revolution: Essays on Latin American Insurgency and Revolutionary Theory (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1991), p. 19.

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propel peasants to restructure their communities. This explains why in Jiangxi peasants remained politically passive when the Communist Party offered many concrete and excludable material incentives to induce them into the revolutionary process. It also explains why Hunan peasants staged impressive political and socioeconomic transformations in the absence of material incentives offered by outside revolutionary organizations. Thus, peasants’ sense of injustice and their normative judgment, rather than a narrow focus on material gains, caused them to rebel. The organizational approach also has improved explanatory power over the structural approach that focuses on power relations within peasant communities. As represented by Skocpol and Wolf, this approach argues that the distribution of power in rural communities shapes peasant rebellions. According to Wolf, it is the middle peasants rather than the poor peasants who are most rebellion-prone because they have more tactical powers. Skocpol argues that peasant rebellion can emerge only in peasant communities that have some economic and political autonomy and only when there are opportunities for peasants to rebel, such as when state repressive capabilities collapse as a result of regime crisis and war. According to its critics, the power resource approach at best explains the preconditions for the success or failure of peasant rebellions, not the reasons why peasants rebel. In general, it lacks a causal mechanism linking peasants’ motives to actions. The organizational theory of this study incorporates both causal mechanisms and preconditions of peasant rebellions. Peasants rebel because they perceive their organizational contexts as unfair and illegitimate. Thus, the theory can better answer the question of “why rebel?” However, rebellion is more likely when a larger favorable political situation exists. The experience of Hunan proved the importance of favorable structural conditions that are correctly emphasized by Skocpol. Thus, this organizational approach agrees with the structural perspective in their common recognition of the importance of the opportunity factor in explaining why only some agrarian revolutions are successful. This organizational perspective also improves the deficiencies of the structural approach that focuses on the economic relationships of agrarian communities. As represented by Arthur Stinchcombe and Jeffrey Paige, this approach argues that agrarian revolutions only emerge in specific types of economic systems, particularly the tenancy system, in which the structure of conflicts between the landed upper class and tenants is zero-sum. Although the theory provides a clear causal mechanism to explain the revolutionary motives of tenants, it is economic reductionism. This study demonstrates that in addition to economic relationships that structure political motives, communal organizational relationships also matter. They mediate class relations and define peasants’ perceptions of interests. Thus, economic structure is not the only factor that shapes peasants’ motives, preferences, and collective actions.

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Therefore, tenancy systems alone cannot explain the different revolutionary patterns of Hunan and Jiangxi, as both had a tenancy-dominated economic system. The percentage of tenants and owner-tenants in their peasant populations and their rent rates were almost identical. This study, by focusing on the organizational variable, reveals that illegitimate communal organizational orders in Hunan led to agrarian revolutions while legitimate ones in Jiangxi frustrated and impeded intense mobilizations by the CCP.

Commonalities with Recent Scholarships on Revolutions During the 1990s a generation of scholarship emerged to study more recent revolutions, such as the Iranian revolution, the Nicaraguan revolution, and revolutionary movements in the Philippines and Latin America.12 One notable feature of these recent studies on revolutions is their common emphasis on nonmaterial factors in the making of revolutions. Both John Foran and Jeff Goodwin point out that materialistic and instrumentalist views of social action fail to grasp the sometimes crucial affectual or emotional aspects of revolutionary movements. As they both quoted Teodor Shanin, “Social scientists often miss a centre-piece of any revolutionary struggle—the fervor and anger that drives revolutionaries and makes them into what they are. . . . At the very centre of revolutions lies an emotional upheaval or moral indignation, revulsion and fury with the powers-that-be, such that one cannot demure or remain silent, whatever the cost.”13 This view brings out the role of legitimacy in the cause of revolutions. The sense of wrongs and injustice propels many to attempt to overthrow the current order, whatever the cost. This legitimacy factor challenges the view that only materialist calculations determine the choices of social actions. Wickham-Crowley’s work best represents this trend in recent scholarship on revolutions.14 His research attempts to explain the varying outcomes of revolutionary movements in Latin America. The study of peasant revolutionary behaviors occupies an important part of his analysis. Although his explanations of varying

12. Representative works of this new generation of studies on revolutions include John Foran, Fragile Resistance: Social Transformation in Iran from 1500 to the Revolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993); Eric Selbin, Modern Latin American Revolutions (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993); Jeff  Goodwin, No Other Way Out: State and Revolutionary Movements, 1945–1991 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes Since 1956 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 13. The quote is from Teodor Shanin, Peasants and Peasant Societies: Selected Readings (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), p. 30. 14. Wickham-Crowley, 1992.

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outcomes among Latin American revolutionary movements are complex and nuanced, he emphasizes the role of legitimacy. He points out that declining legitimacy of the present political and socioeconomic orders is crucial in determining peasants’ decisions to support revolutionary movements. The decline of legitimacy can be the result of either failure of governors (landlords/government) to fulfill the social contract or peasants’ sense of being damaged by landlord or government activities. According to him, it is important to “introduce some notion of ‘damage’ if we are to comprehend and distinguish fully those situations in which peasants rise up against their enemies, and those rather different situations where cultivators are content just to continue till the soil.”15 Therefore, in analyzing peasant decisions to support revolutionary movements, Wickham-Crowley emphasizes that we must understand “the sense of moral outrage involved in the decision,” which rational choice theory “is utterly incapable of grasping.”16 For example, he found that widespread terror against peasants, which was designed to raise the cost of supporting revolutionary movements, usually made them more angry and generated more recruits for revolutions. This focus by recent scholarship on the role of legitimacy in explaining varying outcomes in peasant revolutionary behaviors is completely consistent with the main thrust of this study, which sees agrarian revolutions as peasant attempts to rebel against illegitimate communal organizational orders. Perceptions of legitimacy or illegitimacy of their communal organizational orders explain contrasting peasant revolutionary behaviors in Hunan and Jiangxi. It is an illegitimate communal organizational order that motivated peasants in Hunan to seek organizational change at the community level. Indeed, after Hunan peasants overthrew the old communal order, they quickly established a new one that centered on peasant associations to regulate the internal affairs of the community. As historical accounts show, while peasant associations pursued economic activities, such as rent reduction and land reform, they also performed many other responsibilities, such as banning gambling and elevating women’s rights. This peasant association–centered new communal order commanded wide support and legitimacy among peasants precisely because it was based on voluntary cooperation among members of equal resources and power.

Reassessing the CCP Revolution This book also has implications for the study of the great Chinese revolution. The Chinese revolution is the classic example of what Samuel Huntington calls the “Eastern type” of revolution, which starts in rural areas.17 Many scholars attributed the success 15. Wickham-Crowley, 1991, p. 178. 16. Ibid., p. 19. 17. Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968).

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of the CCP in rural areas to its mobilization ability and extensive organizational structures.18 As Robert Marks complains, studies of the origins of the Chinese revolution focus almost entirely on Communist organization and mobilization tactics: “nearly all interpretations place its origins anywhere but in the rural society,” because studies of the Chinese revolution place “explaining Chinese Communist success at the forefront.”19 The older generation of studies on the CCP revolution applied this perspective to different periods and localities. For example, in his study of the Jiangxi revolution, Ilpyong J. Kim argues that the success of the Communist revolution stemmed from its emphasis on mobilizing “passive and irresponsive” masses for revolutionary ends. Peasant participation in organization, according to Kim, roused them from political apathy, exposed them to party propaganda, and gave them the sense of shaping their own social and political environments.20 Mark Selden’s study of the Shaan-Gan-Ning base area in North China from 1937 to 1945 also focused on the CCP’s mobilization of peasants. According to him, the CCP “successfully united broad strata behind a mobilization program of national resistance and socioeconomic and political reform.”21 Indeed, his study crystallized the so-called Yanan Way, through which the CCP practiced a “mass-line” strategy to mobilize the peasantry and integrate it into the revolutionary process. Chen Yung-fa adopted a similar but more nuanced approach to study the CCP’s sophisticated and locally adaptive mobilization strategies in East and Central China during the 1937–45 period.22 Essentially, the CCP-centered studies see the Chinese revolution as an outcome “made” by the purposive actions of revolutionaries. As Tsou Tang summarizes the idea in a relatively recent interpretation of the Chinese revolution: “The Chinese case shows that the process of innovation, systematization, and strategic interaction in the choices made by the political actors are direct and readily observable micromechanisms leading to macrohistorical changes, particularly the transformation of

18. Representative studies include Ilpyong J. Kim, “Mass Mobilization Policies and Techniques Developed in the Period of the Chinese Soviet Republic,” in A. Doak Barnett, ed., Chinese Communist Politics in Action (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968); Ilpyong J. Kim, The Politics of Chinese Communism: Kiangsi under the Soviets (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); Mark Selden, Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971); Mark Selden, China in Revolution: The Yenan Way Revisited (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995); and Chen Yung-fa, Making Revolution: The Communist Movement in Eastern and Central China, 1937– 1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986). For more discussion on the CCP mobilization perspective, see Kathleen Hartford and Steven M. Goldstein, 1989a. 19. See Robert Marks, Rural Revolution in South China: Peasants and the Making of History in Haifeng County, 1570–1930 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), p. xi. 20. Kim, 1973, pp. 131–33. 21. Selden, 1995, p. xi. 22. Chen Yung-fa, 1986.

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one political system into another one.”23 In particular, Tang argues that the CCP’s success lay in its innovations in strategies and policies. As he points out, “These innovations account for the CCP’s ability to survive and achieve final victory.”24 According to Tang, these CCP innovations in strategies and polices included a focus on peasantbased revolution, using the country to surround the cities, the practice of the mass line to mobilize the people, the united front approach to neutralize potential enemies and widen societal support, and an emphasis on political and cultural transformations of human behaviors.25 As pointed out by Ralph Thaxton, this voluntarist perspective pays scant attention to the peasant society and history in the pre-1949 revolutionary process. Instead, “the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the peasantry was approached, defined, and analyzed in terms of the party’s motivations and capabilities to penetrate, mobilize, and capture peasant society for its own political objectives.”26 The deficiency of this approach is rather clear. This study shows that the CCP’s rural organizational capacity and mobilization techniques may not be as essential as portrayed. In Hunan, the CCP was not responsible for the outbreak of a great agrarian revolution. As evidence indicates, the CCP’s presence at the local levels was minimal at best. When a favorable macrosituation opened up political space, peasants rose up to overthrow the existing rural orders. In other cases like Jiangxi, the CCP simply failed to induce peasants into the revolutionary process even though it practiced intense mobilization. In fact, pre-existing rural social structures effectively tempered and even impeded the CCP’s mobilization. As noted by recent comparative studies on revolution, theories that emphasize outside revolutionary organizations fail to pay sufficient attention to the question of “why are some ‘populations’ more responsive to attempts at mobilization, while other populations within the same society are less responsive to such attempts?”27 Instead, such theories hold that outside organizations practicing the same mobilization tactics everywhere achieve the same effect. These theories therefore overlook the importance of the pre-existing social-economic structures of peasant societies to both the causes of agrarian revolutions and the revolutionary mobilization from outside organizations. Many scholars studying the Chinese revolution specifically focus on the exchange relationship used by the CCP to mobilize peasants in the revolutionary process. They argue that peasants supported revolutions because of the practical rural policies of the Communist Party. The party used such measures as land reforms and reduction 23. Tsou Tang, “Interpreting the Revolution in China: Macrohistory and Micromechanisms,” Modern China, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2000), p. 214. 24. Ibid., p. 212. 25. Ibid., pp. 212–21. 26. Thaxton, 1983, p. iiv. 27. Wickham-Crowley, 1991, p. 8.

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of taxes and levies to build an exchange relationship with peasants. As Hartford and Goldstein point out, this perspective emphasizes “exchanges between peasants and the CCP that gained involvement in and support for party program.” Specifically, the exchanges rested upon “meeting immediate peasant needs as a prerequisite for the continuation of such involvement.”28 This focus on practical rural policies of the CCP reflects the logic of Popkin’s rational choice theory. However, the revolutionary experiences of Hunan and Jiangxi seriously challenge the roles of exchange relationships. On the one hand, in Jiangxi, the CCP indeed built a range of exchange relationships with the peasants. The party offered many concrete and exclusive benefits to those who participated in the revolutionary process. The result was not that positive. On the other hand, outside revolutionary organizations could offer little to the peasants of Hunan. Indeed, the CCP was largely absent in the local revolutionary process in Hunan. However, the absence of an exchange relationship with the CCP did not dampen the widespread enthusiasm of Hunan peasants who waged a great agrarian revolution. As Wickham-Crowley argues in his research on Latin American peasant rebellions, “The success of revolutionaries in mobilizing the peasantry depends primarily on the preexisting nature of peasant culture and social structure, and only secondarily on the actions of the revolutionaries themselves.”29 Likewise, the CCP mobilization theory of the Chinese revolution should be put in a more balanced perspective. Although the party’s rural strategy worked in some places, such as North China where it successfully built key rural base areas that laid the foundation for its military victories during the 1946–49 period, in other places pre-existing communal social structures, both formal and informal ones, effectively tempered party mobilization efforts. Elizabeth Perry’s research on peasant rebellions in the Huaibei region of North China began a new trend in the study of the peasant rebellions that pays due attention to pre-existing social structures and their constraints on the CCP mobilization. Indeed, she begins her book with the question of why “only some peasants rebel.”30 To answer this question, Perry studies the impact of ecological pressures on peasant communities that adopted either a predatory or protective strategy of collective violence for survival purposes. Moreover, she emphasizes the importance of kinship, patron-client ties, and other communal allegiances in shaping communal social structures and survival strategies. According to her, “Kinship and community had developed into effective vehicles for meeting the challenges for survival in a hostile

28. Hartford and Goldstein, 1989a, p. 17. For other studies that use this exchange perspective to explain the CCP success, see Steven Levine, Anvil of Victory: The Communist Revolution in Manchuria, 1945–1948 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987). 29. See Wickham-Crowley, 1991, p. 15. 30. Elizabeth Perry, Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China: 1845–1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1980), p. 1.

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environment.”31 Therefore, although the roots of agrarian struggle can be attributed to socioeconomic inequality, “the class content of that inequality could be obscured by other cross-cutting allegiances.”32 As she points out, because of the intervening effects of communal social structures, “groups of peasants should indeed be expected to differ in their propensity for rebellion, depending upon their position in the social structure.”33 Perry’s research found that pre-existing social structures in Huaibei once thwarted the activities of the CCP. As she observes, “When Communist cadres moved in to alter the societal arrangement, primitive rebels proved resistant to the changed conditions.”34 Resistance by the local communities tempered the results of CCP mobilization, which sought to use rent reduction and other economic reforms to turn peasants into supporters. According to Perry, communities based on extensive pre-existing social structures “exerted powerful influence on the style and success of Communist efforts to mobilize the local populace.35 Marks also emphasizes pre-existing social structures in his study of the peasant revolution in Haifeng, Guangdong Province, during the 1920s. Marks specifically tries to correct the bias of CCP-centered studies of the Chinese revolution that “place its origins anywhere but in the rural society.”36 According to Marks, “To focus on revolutionary ideas (Marxism or the thoughts of Mao), or on the practice of the Communist Party, implicitly lends those elements primary place in explaining social movements and revolutions, ignoring the role of common people in the making of their own history.”37 Marks suggests that studies of the Chinese revolution must abandon such a voluntarist approach, emphasizing the intent of revolutionary elites, and shift focus to rural social structures that “patterned peasant life” and defined interests between groups such as class and kin. Marks’s study focuses on the changes in local social structure that were caused by large historical forces such as imperialism. According to him, before China’s integration into the capitalist world market, interclass relationships in Haifeng were mediated by a “fair” tenancy system under which land ownership did not confer owners the right to remove peasants from the land. It conferred only the right to a certain portion of the produce of the land as rent. As a result of this land system, the dominating pattern of conflicts in Haifeng was intralineage rivalries that “cut across class lines.”38 However, the arrival of imperialistic capitalism began to change the local social 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

Ibid., p. 252. Ibid. Ibid., p. 251. Ibid., p. 257. Ibid., p. 213. Robert Marks, 1984, p. xi. Ibid., p. xv. Ibid., p. 283.

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structure and shift the dynamics of conflicts. Landlords’ intensified efforts to alter the terms of tenancy to their advantage gave rise to class-based conflicts. As Marks puts it, “As the rural social structure changed, so too did the forms of collective action.”39 Marks suggests that the agrarian revolution in Haifeng during the 1920s was mainly caused by peasant reaction to the new pattern of social conflicts in the area, which was an outcome of recent changes in land tenure relations. The local CCP organization merely facilitated and articulated the revolution. As he puts it, “Explanations of revolutionary movements in terms of elite politics ignore the underlying historical currents—how particular class structures give rise to social classes and groups and how these groups articulate their interests and act in pursuit of them.”40 Averill also uses a similar approach to study the CCP revolutionary activities in the Jinggangshan base area in the 1920s. According to Averill, local social structures profoundly constrained the CCP’s strategies and goals. Instead of class-based social cleavages, this region was mainly defined by “mutually-reinforcing socioeconomic and ethnic fracture lines that separated two often antagonistic communities: a lowland society predominantly descended from earlier Han Chinese settlers of the region and a highland society dominated by descendants of later-arriving Hakkaspeaking migrants.”41 This particular local social structure, centered on conflicting ethnic groups, “provided the context within which the party had to compete for power and ensured that the revolutionary movement which grew up in the mountains on the JiangxiHunan border would bear the imprint of the environment in which it was created.”42 Specifically, the party itself was “pulled and tugged by participants in these disputes.”43 As a result, ethnic conflicts vastly complicated the CCP’s ability to build a united revolutionary movement based on a broad spectrum of the local society. Instead, the CCP had to rely on ad hoc and shifting alliances with existing ethnic groups, rebel forces, and even bandits. Because of constraints imposed by pre-existing social structures, as represented by enduring patterns of socioeconomic tension between the relatively deprived mountain dwellers and the more prosperous lowland neighbors who habitually took advantage of them, Averill concludes that “these situational and structural circumstances did affect the revolutionary struggle.”44 Averill thus challenges the CCP-centered perspectives on the Chinese revolution by noting that “the Jinggangshan experience epitomizes the inherent ambiguities and 39. Ibid., p. 284. 40. Ibid., p. 285. 41. Stephen C. Averill, Revolution in the Highlands: China’s Jinggangshan Base Area (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), p. 4. 42. Ibid., p. 3. 43. Ibid., p. 396. 44. Ibid., p. 399.

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contradictions rather than the strategic genius involved in the CCP base-building strategy, and in which the clear-cut Manichean struggle between the good and evil characteristic of party historiography generally is replaced by a fuzzier and more complex narrative framework.”45 The above studies of the Chinese revolution by Perry, Marks, and Averill all pay due attention to pre-existing social structures of the peasant society. They reveal that these structures could play a variety of roles in the making of agrarian revolutions. In some cases, as Marks’s study reveals in the Haifeng context, pre-existing social structures, which reflected shifts in economic systems and class relations, facilitated agrarian revolution and allowed the CCP to take advantage of peasant radicalism. In Huaibei and Jinggangshan, pre-existing social structures instead mediated class relations and seriously constrained the CCP’s efforts to mobilize peasants for revolutionary causes. In this regard, these studies all correct the “organizational weapon” perspective of earlier studies on the CCP revolution and resonate with the thrust of this comparative study of Hunan and Jiangxi. They all share the same approach by treating seriously the roles of pre-existing social structures of the peasant communities and how they encouraged or discouraged the revolutionary tendencies of peasants. For this reason, they are able to answer the question of why only some peasants rebelled. The progress made by these studies of the Chinese revolution is consistent with the focus of a new generation of comparative studies of peasant revolutions in other parts of the world. A common conclusion of these recent studies is that success or failure of revolutionaries in mobilizing peasants is shaped by pre-existing social structures of peasant societies. Moreover, peasant perceptions of legitimacy or illegitimacy of existing socioeconomic and political orders play a crucial role in determining their revolutionary tendencies. Rational calculation of material gains alone cannot motivate peasants to support a revolutionary movement and even become part of it. A sense of indignation and anger directed against the current socioeconomic and political orders is critical in explaining peasants’ motives to rebel.

45. Ibid., p. 8.

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Index

agrarian rebellions, causes of, 125–26 agrarian revolutions approach to (see organizational approach) Marxist class exploitation thesis on, 35–37, 143–44 (see also moral economy approach; rational choice theory; structural approaches) other theoretical approaches to, 35, 143 studies of, 3 vs. community-sized rebellions, 139, 140–41 Agrarian Revolutions (Paige), 3 agricultural laborers lack of participation in Jiangxi revolution, 29 land redistribution in Jiangxi revolution and, 134, 136–37 as powerless, 47 Agricultural Labor Small Groups in Land Investigation Campaign, 137 ancestral worship, 86–87, 90, 121, 122 Antidesertion Ten Men Group, Red Army’s, 29 Autumn Harvest Uprising, 23, 28 table 1.2 Averill, Stephen C., 77, 80, 85, 153–54 Axelrod, Robert, 66–67 Baker, Hugh D. R., 87, 88 baojia (police population control system), 99–100, 102–3, 115, 123–24 Bates, Robert, 67 Blum, Jerome, 56, 59, 70, 71 Buck, John L., 41 Campbell, Bruce, 66

capitalism, impact on traditional peasant communities, 3, 37–40, 62, 152–53 CCP-KMT coalition collapse and rebirth of, 22 role in Hunan revolution, 15, 16, 18, 126, 129, 130 Central America, corporate peasant communities, 56, 62–64, 65, 71–72 Central Revolutionary Base Area, 22 Chen Han-sheng, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93 Chen Yi, 23, 26, 27, 135 Chiang Kai-shek, 22 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Huaibei, 152 in Hunan fails to mobilize peasants, 3, 11, 21n31, 46, 150 lacks control over revolution, 18–19, 133 land policies, 20–22 role in creation of peasant associations, 13, 14, 15 in Jiangxi benefits offered to peasants by, 46–47, 134, 151 complains about social welfare, 90–91 mobilizes peasants, 3, 11, 26–27, 133, 135–36, 141, 149 peasants lack interest in joining, 134–35 uncooperative relationship with peasants, 25, 142, 150 Second Revolutionary War and, 7, 22–23 Chinese economy, traditional, 40–44

174 Chinese Lineage and Society (Freedman), 82 Chinese provinces, map of, x Chinese revolution CCP’s mobilization tactics as driving, 1, 2, 11, 149–51, 152, 153–54 importance of Hunan and Jiangxi in, 7 limitations of established interpretations of, 12, 148–51, 152, 153–54 prime role of peasants in, 152–53 structural approaches and, 48–49, 140 studies on the origins of, 1, 2 Chinese Soviet Republic, 25, 27, 31, 36 closed corporate community, 55 Cohen, Myron L., 79 collective goods. See joint goods colonialism’s impact on local communities, 39, 63–64, 65 commercialization of agricultural communities, 3, 37–39, 40–44 common-field system, medieval Europe’s, 58–59, 65–66 common-field villages, 55, 71 community, Taylor’s definition of, 68 community control, 99–100, 102–3, 115, 123–24 community cooperative organizations capitalism’s role in destroying, 38 contractarian, 66–69, 70–72 origins of, 64–69 outcomes of, 120, 122, 124 peasants’ assessment of legitimacy of, 72–73 purposes of, 53–54, 143 as regulating peasant communities, 2 role in organizational approach, 4, 7, 143, 145 types of, 54–57 contractarian cooperative institutions, 66–69, 70–72 See also corporate lineages, southeastern China’s control measures as dimension of community cooperative institutions, 69–70 in Hunan’s tuan-lian, 123–24 influence on members’ psychological orientation, 120

Index in southeastern China’s corporate lineages, 121–22 corporate land, Southeast China’s, 87–89, 92–93, 121–22, 136 corporate lineages, southeastern China’s class differentiation in, 92–94, 120 impetus for and development of, 82–86 institutions and functions of, 86–92 interclass relationships in, 144 peasants’ evaluation of legitimacy of, 120–23, 133–38, 141 corporate peasant communities in Central America, 62–64, 65, 71–72 in Europe, 56–60, 71, 72 in Japan, 60–62 punishment in, 68 coups by KMT (1927), 22 cultivators, types of, 50–51, 50 table 2.7 Dahlman, Carl J., 58–59 decision making as dimension of community cooperative institutions, 70–71 in Hunan’s tuan-lian, 124 influence on perception of organizational processes, 120 in southeastern China’s corporate lineages, 91–92, 94, 122 Deng Zhongxia, 13–14 descent groups, 83 desertions from Red Army, 28–29, 134 Ebrey, Patricia B., 83 ecological pressures. See environmental challenges economic programs during Hunan revolution, 20–21 economic relationships Marxist class exploitation thesis and, 35–37, 143–44 role in peasant revolutions, 4 role in structural approaches, 49–51, 143, 146–47 elders’ roles in lineage-based communities, 87, 90, 91, 122 elites, source of

Index as dimension of community cooperative institutions, 70–71 in Hunan’s tuan-lian, 124 influence on perception of organizational processes, 120 in southeastern China’s corporate lineages, 91–92, 93, 122 See also landed gentry emotion and revolutions, 145, 147, 148, 154 Emperor Qianlong, 82 Emperor Yongzheng, 82 environmental challenges corporate lineages as response to, 83 influence on Central American corporate peasant communities, 63, 64 influence on community organizational level, 55–56 influence on demand of joint goods, 54 influence on European corporate peasant communities, 58 influence on Japanese corporate peasant communities, 60–61, 62 Perry’s studies on impact of, 151 in Southeast China, 78–79, 80, 81 Etzioni, Amitai, 70, 121, 123 Europe corporate peasant communities in, 56–60, 71, 72 regulative communities in, 55 exchange relationships between CCP and peasants, 150–51 exports from Jiangxi, 42 table 2.6 fairness, peasants’ measure of considerations influencing, 119 in Hunan, 125, 130 in Jiangxi, 123, 133 role in agrarian revolutions, 125–26 role in moral economy approach, 145 fang (branch of corporate lineage), 92 Farriss, Nancy, 63, 64 Faure, David, 84 finances, tuan-lian’s, 106–7 First Revolutionary Civil War, 7 Foran, John, 147 formal organizations, importance and roles, 54

175 Freedman, Maurice, 82, 83–84, 86, 88 free riders, as a problem of collective action, 45, 64, 67–68 frontier environment, Southeast China’s, 81, 83–84, 86 Fujian corporate land in, 89, 122 corporate lineages in, 85 failure of land revolution in, 32, 137 intercommunity competition in, 80–81, 82 land holdings in, 79, 93 levels of poverty in, 35, 36 table 2.2 location of peasant revolution in, 22, 23, 25 migration to and from, 75, 77, 78 Red Army recruits from, 28 table 1.2, 29 Red Army’s role in, 26 rent rates in, 37 table 2.5 fusion, lineage formation and, 84–85 Gan River valley, 76 Gelao Hui (sect), 107–8 genealogies and kinship fictive, 63, 84–85, 120–21 Perry on importance of, 151–52 role in descent groups, 83 See also group identity gentry. See landed gentry Goldstein, Steven M., 11, 140, 151 goods, public, 64, 66, 67–68 See also joint goods Goodwin, Jeff, 142, 147 group identity in Hunan’s tuan-lian, 123 importance in contractarian cooperative organizations, 69, 70 in southeastern China’s corporate lineages, 87, 94, 120–21, 136 Guangdong corporate land in, 88, 89 corporate lineages in, 84 intercommunity competition in, 80, 82 migration to and from, 75, 76, 77, 78 peasant revolution in Haifeng in, 152–53 hacienda system, 49, 50 table 2.7 Haifeng, peasant revolution in, 152–53

176 Hakkas areas populated by, 81, 90 conflict with puntis, 79–80 corporate land of, 88 migration of, 75–77, 78, 84 revolution in Jinggangshan and, 153 Hartford, Kathleen, 11, 140, 151 Hechter, Michael, 49, 53–54, 65, 68 hegemony of CCP and Red Army in Jiangxi, 4, 27, 48, 52, 141–42 See also power Hobsbawn, Eric, 37 Hoffman, Richard, 58 Hong Kong, 76 See also New Territories of Hong Kong Hong Xiuquan, 95 Hsiao Kung-chuan, 110 Hunan agriculture in, 16, 115, 129 interclass relationships in, 144 levels of poverty in, 35, 36 table 2.1, 48 market economy in, 41, 43–44 peasant rebellions in, 95–101, 104, 107–8 rent rates in, 36 table 2.3, 52 See also peasant associations, Hunan; tuan-lian (Hunan militia) Hunan Army, 98–99, 105, 107, 111 Hunan Peasant Association, 128, 129, 130 See also peasant associations, Hunan Hunan revolution absence of exchange relationship between peasants and CCP in, 151 approach to, 6–7, 8–10 Autumn Harvest Uprising in, 23, 28 table 1.2 communal organizational illegitimacy and, 123–33, 141 consequences of, 16–17 emergence and spread of, 13–15 importance of, 7 primary records of, 8 as radical, 17–22, 126 rational choice theory and, 146 structural approaches and, 147 vs. Jiangxi revolution, 2–5, 33 See also Chinese Communist Party (CCP): in Hunan; land revolution: in Hunan

Index Huntington, Samuel, 148 illegitimacy. See legitimacy and illegitimacy, measure of imperialism, destruction of traditional communities due to, 37 imposed cooperative institutions, 65–66, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73 See also tuan-lian (Hunan militia) Indians, Central American, 63–64, 65 interclass relationships as cause of peasant rebellions, 144, 152 intercommunity competition in Southeast China, 78–82 intracommunity relationships as consideration in evaluating organizational frameworks, 119–20 in Hunan’s tuan-lian, 123 in southeastern China’s corporate lineages, 120–21 Japan, corporate peasant communities in, 60–62 Jiang Jieshi. See Chiang Kai-shek Jiangxi corporate land in, 89 exports from, 42 table 2.6 Hunan peasant rebellions’ impact on, 108 interclass relationships in, 144 intercommunity competition in, 80, 82 land holdings in, 92 levels of poverty in, 35, 36 table 2.1, 48 lineages in, 85 market economy in, 41–43 migration to and from, 75–76, 77–78 rent rates in, 36 table 2.3, 37 table 2.4, 52 See also corporate lineages, southeastern China’s; hegemony of CCP and Red Army in Jiangxi Jiangxi revolution approach to, 6–7, 8–10 benefits offered by CCP to peasants in, 46–47, 134, 151 communal organizational legitimacy and, 120–23, 133–38, 141 as conservative, 25–32, 133

Index exchange relationship between peasants and CCP in, 151 historical background of, 22–23 importance of, 7 Mao’s Red Army and, 23–25 primary records of, 8 rational choice theory and, 146 relationship between peasants and CCP during, 25, 142, 150 structural approaches and, 147 vs. Hunan revolution, 2–5, 33 See also land revolution: failure in Jiangxi Jiangxi Soviet Republic, 36, 37 table 2.4, 77, 134, 135 Jinggang Mountain, 23, 26 Jinggangshan base area, 153 Johnson, Chalmers, 11 joint goods in community cooperative institutions, 45, 53–54, 64, 65, 67 justice, peasants’ measure of considerations influencing, 119 in Hunan, 130 in Jiangxi, 123, 133 role in moral economy approach, 145 Kertzer, David J., 70, 121 Kim, Ilpyong J., 25, 29, 149 kinship. See genealogies and kinship Kiser, Edgar, 49 Kuhn, Philip A. on baojia, 115 on funds for tuan, 106–7 on the relationship between the state and landed gentry, 110 on simplex vs. multiplex tuan, 101–2 on tuan as “natural institutions,” 104 on tuan-lian’s tax collection, 114 on tuan-lian’s transformation into state structure, 116, 117 Kuomintang (KMT), 7, 14, 15, 20–22, 22–23, 25, 46 See also CCP-KMT coalition Kurtz, Marcus, 40 laborers agricultural, 29, 47, 134, 136–37 migratory, 50 table 2.7, 51

177 Lamley, Harry, 82 land, corporate, 87–89, 92–93, 121–22, 136 See also agriculture landed class as gentry class, 105 See also landlords and landlord class landed gentry in Hunan dominance in tuan-lian, 124, 125 exploitation by, 112–16, 124, 127, 144 fights with peasants during revolution, 128 organizational response to peasant rebellions, 97–101, 123 role in creating tuan-lian, 105–6 stripped of power by peasant associations, 16, 127–28 relationship between state and, 110–11, 112–13, 114 Land Investigation Campaign, Jiangxi, 31–32, 135, 136–37 landlords and landlord class in Hunan deny peasants the opportunity to rebel, 140 dominance in tuan-lian, 127 as rent collectors, 113–14 role in creating Hunan Army, 105 stripped of land and power, 16, 17, 21, 127–28 in southeastern China land holdings of, 92–93 land redistribution and, 31, 32, 136–37 lineages as, 89 welfare benefits offered by, 135 land redistribution in Central American corporate peasant communities, 63, 65, 71–72 as feature of peasant rebellions, 105 in mir (Russian peasant communes), 55, 57 role in Marxist class exploitation thesis, 38, 39 land revolution failure in Jiangxi, 30, 31–32, 134, 135, 136–38

178 in Hunan, 16–17, 20–22, 21n31, 32, 129–30 and intensity of peasant revolutions, 12 Latin America, peasant revolutions and rebellions in, 1, 147–48, 151 legitimacy and illegitimacy, measure of considerations influencing, 72–73, 119 in Hunan peasant associations, 148 in Hunan tuan-lian, 123–33, 141 role in agrarian revolutions, 125–26, 145, 154 role in revolutions, 147–48 in southeastern China’s corporate lineages, 120–23, 133–38, 141 Lineage Organization in Southeast China (Freedman), 82 lineages. See corporate lineages Little, Daniel, 143 local revolutionary leadership as criterion for measuring intensity of peasant revolutions, 12 in Hunan, 19–20 in Jiangxi, 29–31 Luo Ergang, 79 Luong, Hy Van, 45–46, 51 macrocausal comparative-historical research, 5–7 Magagna, Victor V., 54, 55, 59, 66, 69, 142 Mahoney, James, 6, 7 managers of ancestral estates, 91–92, 122 Mao Tse-tung arrives and thrives in Jiangxi, 23–25, 27 on conflicts between migrant and native communities, 80 on corporate land in Jiangxi, 89, 92 on corporate lineages in Jiangxi, 83 difficulty mobilizing Jiangxi peasants, 141 investigates revolutionary organs in Jiangxi, 29 land redistribution in Jiangxi and, 31, 136–37 organizes peasant associations in Hunan, 14 See also “Investigation Report on the Peasant Movements in Hunan, An” (Mao Tse-tung)

Index map of Chinese provinces, x March, James G., 54 market economy in Hunan, 41, 43–44 Marxist class exploitation thesis and, 35–37, 143–44 in precapitalist rural societies, 44 Marks, Robert, 1, 149, 152–53, 154 Marx, Karl, 1, 51 Marxist class exploitation thesis, 35–37, 143–44 McCord, Edward A., 109, 116 Meyer, John, 54 middle peasants land holdings of, 92 land redistribution in Jiangxi revolution and, 136–37 power of, 47–48 role in creating rebellions, 146 Migdal, Joel S., 3, 37–38, 44, 45 militia. See tuan-lian (Hunan militia) mir (Russan peasant communes), 55, 57 mobilization of peasants by CCP and Red Army, 3, 151–52 and intensity of peasant revolutions, 12 by landed gentry during Hunan peasant rebellions, 97–101, 123 See also Chinese Communist Party (CCP): in Hunan; Chinese Communist Party (CCP): in Jiangxi Moore, Barrington, 1, 5, 6, 39 moral economy approach explanation of peasant rebellions in, 3 tenets of, 37–40, 143 vs. organizational approach, 145 weaknesses of, 40–44 Moral Economy of the Peasant, The (Scott), 3, 37 Morse, H. B., 42, 43 multiplex tuan, 102, 104, 116 Myers, Ramon, 41 Nanchang Uprising, 23, 28 table 1.2 Nationalist Party. See Kuomintang (KMT) National Revolutionary Army, 15 natural resources, Southeast China’s, 79, 80–81, 85

Index

179

New Territories of Hong Kong, 88, 90, 91–92 noncultivators’ role in peasant revolutions, 50–51, 50 table 2.7 normative powers, 70, 121 Northern Expedition, 24, 140

in Hunan’s tuan-lian, 124 in southeastern China’s corporate lineages, 122 “organizational weapon” perspective on Chinese revolution, 11, 142, 154

Olson, Mancur, 45 open communities, 55 open-field system. See common-field system, medieval Europe’s opportunity as an enabling factor for agrarian revolutions, 141–42, 146 organizational approach to peasant revolutions, 1–3, 4–5, 6–7, 8–10, 73, 119, 139–54 See also community cooperative organizations organizational control as dimension of community cooperative institutions, 69–70 in Hunan’s tuan-lian, 123–24 influence on members’ psychological orientation, 120 in southeastern China’s corporate lineages, 121–22 organizational frameworks and principles, 69, 72–73, 119–20 organizational idelogies as dimension of community cooperative institutions, 69 in Hunan’s tuan-lian, 123 influence on perception of intracommunity relationships, 120 in southeastern China’s corporate lineages, 120–21, 135 organizational levels, cooperative community institutions’ in Central American corporate peasant communities, 62–64 determinants of, 55–56 in European corporate peasant communities, 57–59 in Japanese corporate peasant communities, 60–62 organizational processes as consideration in evaluating organizational frameworks, 120

Paige, Jeffrey M., 3, 4, 49, 50–51, 50 table 2.7, 146 paramilitarily organized communities. See tuan-lian patrilineally organized communities. See corporate lineages, southeastern China’s peasant associations, Hunan emergence of, 13–14, 15, 141 membership numbers of, 15 table 1.1, 17–18, 126 power of, 16–17, 20, 127–33, 148 peasant behaviors approach to, 2, 6–7, 11–12 in Hunan revolution, 17–22, 126 in Jiangxi revolution, 25–32, 133 role in revolutions, 3–4 peasant communities organizational principles of, 69 role in creating revolutions, 1, 119 role in structural approaches, 49 types of, 55, 142 peasant composition in Hunan, Jiangxi, and Fujian, 36 table 2.1, 36 table 2.2 peasant revolutions criteria for evaluating the intensity of, 12 studies of, 3–4 theories of, 139–40 (see also names of particular theories) as transforming the world, 1 See also Hunan revolution; Jiangxi revolution peasants land holdings of, 92–93 middle, 47–48, 92, 136–37, 146 motivation for revolutions by, 4 powerlessness of Hunan, 124 powers of, 47–48 as primary force of social change, 1 See also poor peasants; rich peasants Peasants, Politics, and Revolution (Migdal), 3, 37

180 Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (Wolf), 3, 37 Perkins, Dwight, 41 Perry, Elizabeth, 2, 151–52, 154 plantation system, 49, 50 table 2.7 poor peasants Hunan peasant associations’ attempts to help, 129 lack of participation in Jiangxi revolution, 29–31, 133–34 land holdings of, 92 land redistribution in Jiangxi revolution and, 136–37 as leaders of Hunan revolution, 19–20 numbers in Hunan, Jiangxi, and Fujian, 36 table 2.1, 36 table 2.2 as powerless, 47–48 Popkin, Samuel L., 3, 44–46, 51, 151 Potter, Jack M. on class differentiation, 93 on the creation of corporate lineages, 84, 86, 87 on leadership, 91–92, 122 on members’ ties to corporate lineages, 88 on peasants’ need for community, 53 psychological orientation as consideration in evaluating organizational frameworks, 119–20 in Hunan’s tuan-lian, 123 in southeastern China’s corporate lineages, 121–22 public goods, community cooperation and, 64, 66, 67–68 puntis (local communities), 79–80 Qing army, 95, 96, 97, 98, 112 Qing dynasty, 108 Qing government Gelao Hui’s rebellions against, 107–8 role in tuan-lian, 105, 106 weakened and inept, 97, 110–11 ranch system, 49 rational choice theory explanation of peasant revolutions in, 3–4 Paige as proponent of, 51 tenets of, 44–45, 143

Index weaknesses of, 45–47, 148 Rational Peasant, The (Popkin), 3, 44 reciprocity in corporate peasant communities, 68 Red Army as centre of Jiangxi revolution, 26–27, 135–36 inducements for joining, 46–47 See also hegemony of CCP and Red Army in Jiangxi Red Fourth Army arrival in Jiangxi, 23–25 composition of, 28 table 1.2 difficulty of recruiting Jiangxi peasants to, 27–29, 134 redistributive communities, 55, 142 redistributive mechanisms as dimension of community cooperative institutions, 71–72 influence on community cooperative institutions’ outcomes, 120 in southeastern China’s corporate lineages, 122 regulative communities, 55, 142 remunerative powers in organizational control, 70, 121 rent rates in Hunan, Jiangxi and Fujian, 36 table 2.3, 37 table 2.4, 37 table 2.5, 52 residual communities, 55, 142 revolutionary dynamics, sources of as criterion for measuring intensity of peasant revolutions, 12 in Hunan, 18–19 in Jiangxi, 26 revolutionary organizations, outside role in peasant revolutions, 140–41 role in rational choice theory, 3–4, 44, 45, 46 weakness of theories that emphasize, 150 revolutionary outcomes as criterion for measuring intensity of peasant revolutions, 12 in Hunan, 20 in Jiangxi, 31–32 revolutions as having multiple causes, 142 peasant, 3–4, 12, 139–40

Index as political process involving mobilization, 97 recent studies on, 147–48, 154 See also agrarian revolutions; Hunan revolution; Jiangxi revolution Reynolds, Susan, 57–58, 59, 66, 71 rich peasants land redistribution in Jiangxi revolution and, 31, 32, 136–37 participation in Jiangxi revolution, 29–31, 29 table 1.3, 30 table 1.4, 133–34 rituals importance in contractarian cooperative institutions, 69, 70 role in corporate lineages, 82–83, 86–87, 121, 122 Root, Hilton L., 59 Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, 6 Russian peasant communes (mir), 55, 57 Russian revolution, 48 scope of peasant participation as criterion for measuring intensity of peasant revolutions, 12 in Hunan revolution, 17–18 in Jiangxi revolution, 27–29 Scott, James C., 3, 37, 38–39, 40, 45, 145 Second Revolutionary Civil War, 7, 22–23 segregation, 63–64, 80 Selden, Mark, 11, 149 Shaan-Gan-Ning base area, 149 Shanin, Teodor, 147 sharecroppers, 50 table 2.7, 51 shed people, Southeast China’s, 77–78, 80, 85 Simon, Herbert H., 54 simplex tuan, 101–2, 116 Skinner, William G., 40–41, 42 Skocpol, Theda on causes of peasant revolutions, 4, 39, 40, 48–49, 139–40 on macroanalytic comparative history, 5–6, 7 on power, 146 seminal work of, 3 small-holding system, 49, 50 table 2.7 Smith, Thomas C., 62

181 Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Moore), 5 social rights, peasants’, 39 social structure, role in peasant rebellions, 2, 151–54 So communities in medieval Japan, 60–62 solidarity in traditional peasant communities, 68, 72 Somers, Margaret, 5–6, 7, 51 sources of revolutionary dynamics as criterion for measuring intensity of peasant revolutions, 12 in Hunan, 18–19 in Jiangxi, 26 Southeast China ecological pressures in, 78–79, 80, 81 migration to, 75–79, 84 See also corporate lineages, southeastern China’s Spanish conquest of Latin America, 63–64, 65 state and landed gentry in imperial China, 110–11, 112–13, 114 state breakdown in early Republican era, 108–9 States and Social Revolutions (Skocpol), 3, 5 Stinchcombe, Arthur L., 4, 49–50, 51, 146 structural approaches explanation of peasant revolutions, 4, 140 tenets of, 47–48, 49–51, 143 vs. organizational approach, 146–47 weaknesses of, 48–49, 51–52 subsistence ethic, 38–39, 44 surname groups, 83, 84, 85 Taihang Mountain region, 140 Taiping Rebellion, 95–99, 104, 105, 107, 111 Taylor, Michael, 64, 68 tenancy system, 4, 49–50, 62, 146–47, 152 See also landlords and landlord class Thaxton, Ralph, 140, 150 Tilly, Charles, 5, 6, 59, 97–98 Tsou, Tang, 149–50 tuan-lian (Hunan militia) after Taiping Rebellion, 107–9 degenerates into instrument of class rule, 106, 110–16, 117, 124

182 denies peasants the opportunity to rebel, 140 development of, 99–101 interclass relationships in, 144 organizational features of, 101–7 peasants’ critcism of, 126–27 peasants’ evaluation of illegitimacy of, 123–33, 141 surrender and disbanding of, 128–29 transformation into state structures, 116–17 Tutino, John, 63 village-level tuan, 101–2, 116 voluntary cooperative institutions, 66–69, 70–72 See also corporate lineages, southeastern China’s warlords, early Republican era, 13, 14–15, 24, 25, 108–9 Waterbury, Ronald, 3, 33 Watson, James L., 82–83, 85–86, 87, 89–90, 120–21 Watson, Rubie, 88, 120 wealth redistribution in corporate peasant communiites, 72, 88, 93, 124 welfare, social by Hunan peasant associations, 129 in southeastern China’s corporate lineages, 88, 89–91, 122

Index White Lotus Society, 96 Wickham-Crowley, Timothy, 1, 145, 147–48, 151 Wolf, Eric on capitalism as cause of rural revolutions, 37–38, 40 on class divisions in corporate peasant communities, 120 on closed corporate communities, 55, 62–63 on power, 47–48, 146 on redistributive mechanisms, 72 on rituals, 69 seminal work of, 3 xiao tuan (simplex tuan), 101–2, 116 Yanan Way, 149 Yang, C. K., 91 Yangtze River region, 86, 96, 99, 107 Yongzheng, Emperor, 82 Yuan I, 32, 137, 141 Zeng Guofan builds the Hunan Army, 98 in danger, 108 on sects and the Taiping Rebellion, 97 on tuan-lian, 99–100, 113, 114, 115 Zhu De, 23, 25