True communists are idealists (Chinese Communism after Mao and Deng – Part 2)

Communism (共产主义) is only an assumption of a society form under the research of social science. The civilization history in the past hundred years has shown that the Utopia of communism is not suitable for realization in a civilized society. However, those who fought for communism with their lives in the early days were idealists.

When Russia’s communism was established under Lenin’s leadership, the idealists in China’s intellectual society truly believed in the possibility of the realization of communism. This produced the first generation of the CCP leadership. This first generation has been through trials and tribulations and had so much faith in communism over their own lives.

This means, the first generation CCP (中国共产党) leaders were basically idealists. Even though after winning the Kuomintang (国民党) in 1949, many of the first generation leaders started to fear death especially under the intimidation of Mao, the idealist truth has not changed for the first generation. While several first generation leaders also took a change in their stand towards the commonality aspect of communism, most still preserved the base-line of idealist morality.

The morality baseline of idealists is to seek welfare for the people. While it is true that the leaders possessed privileges and could not bear the temptation to secure positions of comfort for their offspring, this first generation leaders fundamental still upheld the belief to set a good example to the people and were more demanding towards their children to uphold certain integrity standards of living and behaviour.

Other than Ye Jianying’s (叶剑英) family who completely withdrew from official duties to enter the business world, the children of most of the other first generation leaders are in the administration line, living a life not too deviated away from the civilians. Even for those who are in the business world, most are leading the bigger State Owned Enterprises (SOE). As such, a significant part of the Taizidang (Princelings) inherited the altruistic idealistic characteristics of the first generation leaders and felt turned off by the current capitalistic and corrupted officialdom trend in the CCP.

(………… coming up next: The change in CCP leaders since Li Peng ……………..)