A China that adopted Syndicalism instead of Marxism

Mao is even crazier without communist precedents to steer him in a more well, soviet-like direction because he'd have his own special snowflake ideology to use.
 
Syndicalism is, inherently, a system built upon trade unions and workers' organizations. In the 1910s and 1920s, China had neither.
 
Not to burst your bubble, but of of the key reasons Mao was successful- as opposed to his older and more established rivals in the party- was that he recognised that Western style revolutionary leftism centred on the cities as doomed to failure in China. There simply wasn't enough of an urban working class, much less an organised working class to sustain a political movement that could challenge the Nanjing government.

Syndicalism would fare even worse. It has all of those disadvantages, and throws away one great strength of vanguardist Marxism- an organised and disciplined leadership cadre.

China might very well be a happier place if, over the course of the century, the hard left expresses itself chiefly through democratic syndicalism. But it would certainly not be a China which the left actually ran.
 
Syndicalism is, inherently, a system built upon trade unions and workers' organizations. In the 1910s and 1920s, China had neither.

Well, that's not entirely true. There were attempts to educate and organize the tiny urban proletariat, like the efforts of the Shanghai YWCA. Without organizations like farmer's cooperatives, though, syndicalist teachings will make no impact on the mass of peasantry.
 
Whilst it is true that China was a predominantly peasant nation, it's untrue that there were absolutely no trade unions or that their activities weren't integral to the early development of the revolutionary movement within China. During the May Fourth Movement of 1919, tens of thousands of workers were on strike in Shanghai and other cities organised through rudimentary trade unions and guilds. The ginseng dealers' guild even donated funds they had been raising for a banquet to the 60,000 workers on strike in Shanghai. During the first world war more than 10,000 Chinese workers had been temporarily recruited by war industry factories in Europe and after the war they had been sent back home but not without bringing some of the ideas gained from European workplaces. The real eruption of the Chinese workers was during the 1926-1927 period but the Chinese workers disarmed during this period under the instruction of the Stalinist Comintern and soon found their organisations massacred by the nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek and the Communist movement divesting out into the countryside. Not to say that syndicalism is very probable but there were all the elements needed.
 

China doesn't go Syndicalist. Sure there were trade unions in some cities but at the time China was mostly agricultural. Mao looked to the peasants as the revolutionary class, which syndicalism largely doesn't look to them(not saying it can't). So if the revolutionaries adopted Syndicalism than China doesn't go Syndicalist.
 
. . . There simply wasn't enough of an urban working class, much less an organised working class . . .
. . . Without organizations like farmer's cooperatives, though, syndicalist teachings will make no impact on the mass of peasantry.
Liberal land reform was successful in South Korea both during and after the Korean War, but not in the Philippines:

How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World's Most Dynamic Region, Joe Studwell, 2013.

[in Philippines:]

https://books.google.com/books?id=d...ords negotiate directly with tenants”&f=false

" . . . broke one of the cardinal rules of successful land reform as implemented in north-eat Asia: do not let landlords negotiate directly with tenants. . . "
So, yes, a more liberal and middle-of-the-road China could be either successful or unsuccessful with land reform.

More interesting if they’re successful! :p
 
Liberal land reform was successful in South Korea both during and after the Korean War, but not in the Philippines:

So, yes, a more liberal and middle-of-the-road China could be either successful or unsuccessful with land reform.

More interesting if they’re successful! :p

It's a rough series of PODs, though. You need a Chinese socialist movement with the self confidence to defy the immense gravity of Moscow while defeating those socialists who do accept Soviet aid. You need a liberal China that is both able to defeat the Japanese and the immensely powerful landlords. You need industrialization that allows for an incredibly vibrant labor movement or highly political peasants, or both. You ALSO need this liberal China to create a situation intolerable enough that a syndicalist takeover by its powerful unions becomes viable.

How ever you do it, they won't be going syndicalist for decades after the OTL declaration of the Peoples Republic.
 
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It's a rough series of PODs, though. You need a Chinese socialist movement with the self confidence to defy the immense gravity of Moscow while defeating those socialists who do accept Soviet aid. You need a liberal China that is both able to defeat the Japanese and the immensely powerful landlords. . .
I embrace the challenge! :D

It would be cool to see a nation whose legal system tilts ever so slightly in FAVOR of labor unions, say 51 to 49%, without them even particularly coming close to taking over the government.
 
I embrace the challenge! :D

It would be cool to see a nation whose legal system tilts ever so slightly in FAVOR of labor unions, say 51 to 49%, without them even particularly coming close to taking over the government.

I wouldn't really call that syndicalist, though. If labor unions are merely favored, but not officially part of or in control of government in some way..why call it syndicalist?
 
Or you could get a Peasant Syndicalist china, which means Khmer Rouge+a verison of the cultural revolution but on crack. No reason a syndicalist China couldn't be a nightmare.
 
Or you could get a Peasant Syndicalist china, which means Khmer Rouge+a verison of the cultural revolution but on crack. No reason a syndicalist China couldn't be a nightmare.

So...a vanguard party and a peasant-focused social revolution? I rather feel like that's just Maoism with the name scratched off and "SYNDIE CHINESE THOUGHT" written over it.

I'm all for any ideology going crazy, but I feel like for the answer to be worthy of the challenge, it has to have some attributes recognizably syndicalist, rather than just taking OTL and swapping names.
 
It'd be Maoism, but without the moderating elements of marxist-lenism.

I guess, it just feels like cheating the challenge. Like having a "communist" Hitler-lead Germany by changing the name to the National Communist German Worker's Party or something. Absolutely the same in all respects, but we changed the name, so... :p
 
The logic would be it'd be a syndicalism focused in favor of the real workers, the peasants so treating industrial workers/people living in cities as class enemies. Fascist/hard right regimes decay back into democracies after a generation or two, communist regimes can linger on for generations or collapse if failing hard enough after a few decades while I think "Rural syndicalist" regimes would probably just keep going crazy until implosion/outside war removes the regime's existence in ah surprisingly short time periods.
 
The logic would be it'd be a syndicalism focused in favor of the real workers, the peasants so treating industrial workers/people living in cities as class enemies. Fascist/hard right regimes decay back into democracies after a generation or two, communist regimes can linger on for generations or collapse if failing hard enough after a few decades while I think "Rural syndicalist" regimes would probably just keep going crazy until implosion/outside war removes the regime's existence in ah surprisingly short time periods.

What about this Khmer Rouge esque Maoism is particularly syndicalist though?
 
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