“political development”
“Modernity”, as oppose to ancient, is the term used to reveal the final result of the political development (Hoston, Lecture January 7th). Even though different scholars have different theories on the specific processes to achieve the ultimate goal, there is one element shared by them which is the Eurocentricism. According to Edward Shils, “’Modern’ means being Western without the onus of dependence on the West. The model of modernity is a picture of the West detached in some way from its geographical origins and locus”. Therefore, among different theoriests, the trajectories of the political development are the same. Moving from ancient antiquity to modernity is a journey from Asia to Europe, and the latter represents the ultimate human liberty (Dussel, 71). Since modernity and the direction of the political development has deeply bonded with the geographic location, for country like China, its geographical location determined that it was at the very beginning of the political development theoretically. Especially during the 19th and the 20th century, when China was defeated by European nations, those defeats became a sharp contradiction between the delayed and underdeveloped Asia and the modernized and advanced Europe which urged China to seek ways to modernize itself. However, it was difficult for China to directly apply their theories to modernize China as China was listed as the most ancient position in the process of the development. Therefore, scholars and political leaders as Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Liu Shaoqi and Mao Zedong came up different theories combining and integrating Marxism theory to provide a stable theoretical basis for Chinese modernization. [NEEDING A STATEMENT ANWSERING THIS : evaluating how “successful” this response was in
responding to the challenges of “political development” by 1949, by the time of Mao’s death, and
then as of 2011. Be sure to define “political development” and identify your criteria of “success”.]
China when moving towards modernity, it faced multiple problems
First, was the conceptual problem.
Hegel was the first who came up with the idea of the different stages of history (Hoston, January 7). “He constructed the stages as follow: the first was the Oriental despotism where only one was free; the second was Ancient Greece where only some men were free; then the third was ancient Rome where “one in which the individual perishes and realizes his own private object only in that general aim, and then the fourth stage was the German world where people were born into the state ” (Hoston, January 20). The ultimate stage and the final goal for human beings are to liberate themselves and receive full freedom (Hoston, January 20). Marx elaborated Hegel’s theory without his theological interpretation that the stages of history was stimulated by the change of mode of production. According to Marx, “the mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in geneal. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come conflict with the existing relations of production.
