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and advance on to a “capitalist society,” in which the “bourgeoisie,” or
city-dwelling capitalists, exploit the “proletariat,” or laboring industrial
class. When the proletariat overthrow the bourgeoisie, the advance-
ment is to a “socialist society.” Eventually socialist society advances
to a “communist society” in which there is no more exploitation or class
conflict. This historical model seems to resemble the linear conception
of historical development in Judaeo-Christian thought, but with social
perfection replacing God's judgment as the final culmination of all
history.
Almost all Communists agreed that China was stuck in a “feudal”
society and would need to have a “bourgeois revolution” to capital-
ism. After the bourgeois revolutionaries had outlived their usefulness,
their capitalist society would be overthrown and China would
advance to socialism. Marxist-Leninist study groups came to this con-
clusion during the heady days of the May Fourth period. The May 1,
1919, issue of Chen Duxiu's New Youth was dedicated to Marxism,
although most of the articles appearing in this issue were critical of
the ideology. Earlier study groups had been considering Marxism-
Leninism in some detail, but this May Day edition of New Youth intro-
duced it into the broader intellectual communities at Beida and else-
where. Li Dazhao, Beida's head librarian, had been holding such
study groups earlier, and his office became affectionately known as
the “Red Chamber” by his adoring students and groupies, including
the future leader Mao Zedong. Li had, in fact, written the lone article
in favor of Marxism in the May 1 issue; Chen at this time was still
undecided. Chen's adherence to Marxism came in mid-1920, after he
had left Beida. Chen concluded that multiparty democracy on the
Anglo-American model was nothing but a sham, a tool for the bour-
geoisie to maintain political control over capitalist society.
In 1920, then, there were two centers of Marxist study in China: one
at Beida under Li Dazhao, and one in Shanghai under Chen Duxiu. In
the Soviet Union, the Comintern learned about this and dispatched an
agent, Grigory Voitinsky, to organize a Communist party in China.
Voitinsky met with Li and Chen and helped young Marxists in China
organize the Chinese Communist party. The party's First Congress
was held in a girls' school in Shanghai's French concession area in
July 1921. The First Congress decided that the Communists would co-
operate with Sun Yat-sen and accommodate his ideology for the time
being because Sun was, in their estimation, China's best hope for a
bourgeois revolution. Ironically, neither Chen Duxiu nor Li Dazhao
attended this First Congress, but they are still honored as the two
cofounders of the party in China. (Mao later revised his favorable
