New Democracy
신민주주의
A revolutionary stage theory formulated by Mao Zedong in his 1940 essay "On New Democracy." It posited that in colonial and semi-colonial countries, a transitional phase of anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution under the joint dictatorship of four classes, workers, peasants, petty bourgeoisie, and national bourgeoisie, must precede socialist revolution. Mao argued this was a distinct path, neither Western-style bourgeois democracy ("Old Democracy") nor Soviet-style dictatorship of the proletariat. Economically, it envisioned a mixed economy with state ownership of major banks and industries while permitting limited development of national capital. Adopted as the PRC's state framework through the 1949 Common Program, it was effectively abandoned after 1953 when Mao declared the transition to socialism.
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Sources
- Marxists Internet Archive Mao's original 1940 text 'On New Democracy,' the primary source for the two-stage revolution thesis, the four-class bloc, and the distinction between Old and New Democracy
- Wikipedia (EN) overview of New Democracy including the Bloc of Four Classes, the political structure (people's congresses, democratic centralism), and its decline after 1953
- press-files.anu.edu.au Marc Blecher, 'New Democracy' in Afterlives of Chinese Communism (ANU Press), covering the theory, the 1949–1953 controversy over abandoning it, and its legacies