Storming the Heavens: Peasants and Revolution in China, 1925-1949

Storming the Heavens: Peasants and Revolution in China, 1925-1949 – viewed through a Marxist lens brings into focus the central role of peasant mass power in China’s revolutionary transformation. Engaging with debates in peasant studies, on China’s historical transformation, as well as within the Communist movement, it delves into both objective and subjective aspects of the peasant struggle.

In critiquing reformist-orientated perspectives of mainstream Western Sinology, the discussion draws on the neglected works of Chinese Marxists, Chen Hanseng and Chen Boda, to reveal how a system of monopoly rent exacerbated land hunger impacting both poor and middle peasants, making radical land reform the central issue for the revolution. It goes on to explore how the Asiatic features of Chinese feudalism shaped landlord power to complicate peasant organisation at local levels.

Going on to address questions of peasant agency and CPC leadership, traditional rebellion and modern proletarian revolution, the work considers case studies from the field of Chinese peasant studies together with Party documents. Following the zig-zag revolutionary process, it sees how Party and peasant were brought together in a dynamic relationship of mutual learning within a context of change.

Mao’s methods of rural work, Party building and mass organisation are shown as meaningful in meeting the practical challenges of agrarian transformation. Applying a distinctive class analysis, the book shows how the CPC found ways to tackle the resilience of feudal power, handling the contradictions both among the peasants and between the agrarian and national movements to unite the revolutionary forces in reaching towards a socialist future.

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