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<p>Abstract</p>
<p>In 1871, during the Franco-Prussian War, the Parisian workers revolted against
the bourgeois government and established the Paris Commune. Extolling it as the first
workers' government, classical Marxist writers took it as an exemplary--though embryonic--
model of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The principles of the Paris Commune,
according to Marx, lay in that "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made
state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes." General elections and the abolishment
of a standing army were regarded by classical Marxist writers as defining features
of the organ of power established in the Paris Commune. After the defeat of the Paris
Commune, the Marxist interpretation of the Commune was widely propagated throughout
the world, including in China.</p>
<p>20th century China has been rich with experiences of Commune-type theories and
practices. At the end of 1966 and the beginning of 1967, inspired by the Maoist theory
of continuous revolution and the vision of a Commune-type state structure, the rebel
workers in Shanghai, together with rebellious students and revolutionary party cadres
and leaders, took the bold initiative to overthrow the old power structure from below.
On Feb.5, 1967, the Shanghai workers established the Shanghai Commune modeled upon
the Paris Commune. This became known as the January Storm. After Mao's death in 1976,
the communist party and government in China has rewritten history, attacking the Cultural
Revolution. And the Shanghai Commune has barely been mentioned in China, let alone
careful evaluation and in-depth study. This dissertation attempts to recover this
lost yet crucial history by exploring in historical detail the origin, development
and supersession of the Shanghai Commune. Examining the role of different mass organizations
during the January Storm in Shanghai, I attempt to offer a full picture of the Maoist
mass movement based on the theory of continuous revolution. Disagreeing with some
critics' arguments that the Shanghai Commune was a negation of the party-state, I
argue that it neither negated the party nor the state. Instead, the Shanghai Commune
embodied the seeds of a novel state structure that empowers the masses by relegating
some of the state power to mass representatives and mass organs. Differing from the
common narrative and most scholarship in the post-Mao era, I argue that the commune
movement in the beginning of 1967 facilitated revolutionary changes in Chinese society
and state structure. The Shanghai Commune and the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee
developed as ruling bodies that did not hold general elections or abolish the standing
army and in this way did not replicate the Paris Commune. But in contrast to the old
Shanghai organs of power, they were largely in conformity with the principles of the
Paris Commune by smashing the Old and establishing the New. Some of their creative
measures, "socialist new things", anticipated the features of a communal state -a
state that does not eradicate class struggle yet begins to initiate the long process
of the withering away of the state itself.</p>
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