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opening up to rival priesthoods, principally the DPP, in the form of contested, multi-party elections.
5.2 KMT Heresy
As we previously noted, if there is one person who could be given the name prophet of China’s national theology, it is Sun Yat-Sen. We have looked at the Communist priesthood which sees itself as his inheritors. The splintering of the priesthood that was to some extent unified under Sun is going to be the focus of this section. Primarily it aims to answer the question why did the Communists emerge victorious and not the Nationalist KMT of which Sun himself was the founder?
A basic portrait can be painted as follows. According to Communist party theology; if Sun Yat-Sen is the prophet, Mao is the one who followed through on his vision and made it a reality. Chiang Kai Shek is seen as a heretic who twisted the vision and ended up fulfilling a role not too dissimilar from Yuan Shikai. But, considering the unity held amongst this class of revolutionaries on the polytheistic shift in the Chinese theological system, what is the theological difference between Communists and Nationalists? And how did it contribute to the Communists eventually taking control of the mainland?
As we have previously noted (4.2) this class arose out of educated elites that were not part of the imperial bureaucracy and had not been educated along the lines of the Confucian ideal. They were not social elites, and could probably be placed as part of China's, infant modern middle class. This is exactly the class that Weber would expect us to 'encounter an apparent increase in the diversity of religious attitudes.’ (Weber 1965, 95) Weber (Weber 1965, 99) talks about the spread of Christianity through unfree, aspirational and economically active slaves. These people are prone to rationalism and ethical systems of compensation, reward and punishment. This is the parallel for the spread of immanentist theological systems of nationalism, socialism, communism, amongst the equivalent class of unfree, aspirational and economically active Chinese citizens in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
As stated before their primary enemy was not necessarily the imperial family, many reformers were fine with maintaining the imperial family in a constitutional monarchy like Britain or Japan. The primary enemy for this revolutionary class were the members of greater and lesser families who, unlike this group, fit into the imperial bureaucracy. And, at this time
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of weakness, were enriching themselves and even at times declaring a form of independence.
The prime example of such a person was Yuan Shikai, who purchased a minor official title in 1880 after failing the imperial examination twice. It is at the feet of people like this that Weber places the blame for the failure of reforms in China in this period; it seems that this thought was shared by the revolutionary class themselves.
For Communist theology, this hatred of the corrupt landlord officials turned warlords, fit perfectly with the deification of the hardworking, downtrodden Chinese people that defined their strand of nationalism, as this peasant class saw the landlords as their traditional enemy.
(Weber 1968, 79) In other words, the section of the population that had been most 'alienated' by the traditional theological system and therefore 'those which are relatively "available" to be stirred by prophetic movements.' (Parsons 1965, xxxix) was the rural peasantry, and as such, it was their support that was likely to be crucial in emerging as the dominant priesthood.
Weber notes the following: ‘That the peasant has become the distinctive prototype of the pious man who is pleasing to god is a thoroughly modern phenomenon’ (Weber 1965, 83).
He compares this with Christianity where the word ‘pagan’ (paganus), originally the word for rural worker, came to mean someone who was theologically backwards. (Weber 1965, 83)
We can understand this difference through the theological makeup of the revolution. A possible explanation for this, which can be worked through thanks to our framework, is the immanentism that these theological systems have in common. In essence, transcendental divinity translates into a sub-community separated from the laity. Because it is difficult to master the internal evil, therefore fewer achieve this exemplary status. (Monasticism) Immanent divinity, therefore externalised evil, provides much lower separation of the exemplars. Nationalism, for example, the most common of people is seen as an exemplary member of the society (Populism).
We see this also in the differing targets of the variously transcendentalist and immanentist movements. Transcendental movements that seek to master inner evil often encourage movement into the countryside and possibly also view the poorer or lower class people as somehow inferior in their sense of lacking discipline or self-control. Immanentist movements, on the other hand, target the city as a den of iniquity that must be taken back from the corrupt upper classes. 'Thus, what was involved…was very largely a reaction against the development of modern rationalism, of which the cities were regarded as the carriers.' (Weber
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1965, 83-84) These are extreme cases, but the more tangible result is that more immanentist revolutionary groups are likely to be more popular among rural populations, and also be willing to pursue more and more radical and violent means to achieve their ends. (Parsons 1965, xl) Whereas more transcendental revolutionary movements are likely to be more closely tied to urban populations, perhaps more highly educated, and less prone to radical and violent actions.
(Parsons 1965, xli) Another dimension of this is that for the middle classes the focus becomes the family and domestic life. 'The tendency is toward inwardness and edification.' (Weber 1965, 103) Is this the reason that middle-class revolutions (Christianity, Buddhism) tend towards transcendentalism, and lower-class ones (Nationalism, Communism) tend towards immanentism.12
We see this same narrative played out by various factions fighting for power throughout history. For our purposes, however, it is necessary to highlight the different wings of the revolutionary movement in China. One wing, which it is not too difficult to equate to the Nationalists, was slightly more transcendentalist and likely viewed the modern cities as beacons of progress, the best of humanity. The Communists, on the other hand, were slightly more materialist and immanentist and as such were much more successful early on with rural populations who likely equated the city to a den of sin, corrupt and the worst of humanity. As has already been explained, this does not mean that the prophetic voice comes from the rural areas. (Weber 1965, 81) It means that the rural, peasant class need a champion to represent them, and a prophetic movement is likely to be influenced into doing so. (Weber 1965, 81).
Those on the extremes of society are locked in, unable or unwilling to engender change. Change comes from the middle classes.
From this point it is not too easy to engender support from the rural population of China, at this time the vast majority, by doubling down on messaging that was anti-landlordism; and more importantly, equating the corrupt officials with the Nationalist party that had by this time won power. The nationalist party themselves became seen as corrupt and from here it was perhaps too easy for the communists to paint them as a threat, that disdained China's rural population. (Weber 1965, 80) It was this stance that enabled the Communists to emerge as the dominant priesthood of China's new nationalist theological system. This is a very subtle
12 Another aspect that can be highlighted is that immanentist systems tend to be more exclusive against women.
Also more militaristic. Chinese, Roman, Brahmin groups explicitly exclude women. Christianity and Buddhism
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theological difference. And probably wouldn't have been a problem if they had not inherited the insistence on unity in the Priesthood that the literati had held on to before the revolution.