Word: confucian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...many ways he is. And that late "bourgeois careerist, renegade and traitor" Lin Piao is far from being the only one to fall under his influence. As the mounting ideological attacks on the "four olds" (old thought, old culture, old customs and old habits) indicate, the traditional Confucian values have died hard in China and remain an obstacle to the success of Mao's revolution...
...Confucius as "stuffing themselves with food all day while never using their minds at all." He envisioned an ideal ruler of benevolence, moderation and humanity, a type that he believed had existed in a halcyon era long past. While the bad ruler relied on terror and force, the Confucian prince would restore order simply by the strength of his moral example. "If a ruler himself is upright," Confucius taught, "then all will go well without commands...
Ironically, some aspects of Communist rule are reminiscent of these Confucianist ideas. Mao Tse-tung studied the Confucian classics for six years as a youth and never entirely escaped their influence. In his four-volume Selected Works, no less than 22% of his references to other writers are to the sage or his disciples-just short of the 24% devoted to Front-Runner Joseph Stalin...
Both Confucius and Mao place great stress on internalizing "correct" ideas and on the need for the ruler to act as a moral exemplar. Moreover, the party cadres, steeped in Marxism-Leninism, bear what must be to Mao some disconcerting resemblances to the old Confucian bureaucracy, steeped in the revered classics...
Looked at in the long run, the anti-Confucian diatribe is part of Mao's continuing effort to transform the nature of man. He wants to replace the Confucian habits of tranquillity, obedience and fatalism with a new Promethean man of struggle and combativeness. For him, Confucius continues to be a symbol of everything in China that represents hierarchy, stagnation and complacency. For that reason, the sage cannot be permitted to sleep in peace...