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ahorbinskiBibliographic Data: Cheng, Yinghong. Creating the New Man: From Enlightenment Ideals to Socialist Realities. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009.
Main Argument: In the wake of the Enlightenment construction of human nature as inherently malleable and a tabula rasa on to which whatever could be projected, communist regimes the world over (communism itself being an Enlightenment project) undertook to create the "new man" as part and parcel--the ground and the product--of building their "new societies."
Historiographical Engagement: Enlightenment thinkers including Rousseau, Claude-Adrien Helvétius, Locke; Confucius; Lenin; Marx; Mao; Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples World communism has not received adequate historiographical attention as a global movement, and within that the discourse of the new man has not received adequate attention as an actual phenomenon in and of itself.
Chapter 1: Argument, Sources, Examples A diachronic collection of policies and discourse on the "new man" from its origins in the Enlightenment and first outing in the French Revolution (Robespierre as messianic teacher of the nation) to its de facto defeat in individualism in the Soviet bloc in the 1960s, by way of Marx, Lenin, and the Russian intelligentsia of the C19th.
Chapter 2: Argument, Sources, Examples A diachronic collection of policies and discourse on the "new man" (or more properly "Mao's good soldiers") in China from the 1920s until the 1980s, with particular attention to the development of "thought reform" in Yan'an in the 1940s.
Chapter 3: Argument, Sources, Examples The fundamental reshaping of the Cuban character was a necessary condition of Cuba's rapid transition to communism after the revolution, and was a crucial precondition for the same.
Chapter 4: Argument, Sources, Examples The discourse of the "new man" was admired both by disaffected Westerners and by leaders in the Third World [sic], who "were seeking ideas and methods for developing their own countries and for nation building despite many obstacles" (190).
Conclusion: Argument, Sources, Examples The impulse to remake human nature is fundamentally human, neither fully whimsical, megalomaniac, pragmatic, or economic. Also, what is described here was a "world historical phenomenon" (223).
Critical assessment: I couldn't finish this book. The central idea--global communism in world historical analysis--is excellent, but Cheng offers essentially diachronic looks at the discourse of the new man in each country without enough actual analysis. He claims to be in Isaiah Berlin's camp in viewing these communist social engineering endeavors with extreme concern, but I'm not convinced. Particularly since Marx is and must be a central component in any endeavor to move past modernity, I think it's absolutely crucial to be absolutely clear about the terrible human cost of these social experiments--millions of lives ended and still more willfully destroyed--so that they not be repeated in the same fashion. Also, who still even calls it the Third World? and, I'm going to pass over the inherent gender bias of "the new man," since to some extent the gendered bias of the discourse vitiates itself in Cheng's examples of revolutionary new women. Also, I really think North Korea would have made a fascinating addition to the sample set, particularly in light of Cheng's claims about the influence of Confucianism on Chinese communism and Mao (note also that a minority of scholars believe that Kant was influenced directly by Chinese legalism).
Further reading: Donald J. Munro, The Conception of Man in Contemporary China; Rebecca E. Karl, Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth Century World
Meta notes: You have to be your own best (copy) editor, because there's no guarantee anyone else will do it for you.
Main Argument: In the wake of the Enlightenment construction of human nature as inherently malleable and a tabula rasa on to which whatever could be projected, communist regimes the world over (communism itself being an Enlightenment project) undertook to create the "new man" as part and parcel--the ground and the product--of building their "new societies."
Historiographical Engagement: Enlightenment thinkers including Rousseau, Claude-Adrien Helvétius, Locke; Confucius; Lenin; Marx; Mao; Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples World communism has not received adequate historiographical attention as a global movement, and within that the discourse of the new man has not received adequate attention as an actual phenomenon in and of itself.
Chapter 1: Argument, Sources, Examples A diachronic collection of policies and discourse on the "new man" from its origins in the Enlightenment and first outing in the French Revolution (Robespierre as messianic teacher of the nation) to its de facto defeat in individualism in the Soviet bloc in the 1960s, by way of Marx, Lenin, and the Russian intelligentsia of the C19th.
Chapter 2: Argument, Sources, Examples A diachronic collection of policies and discourse on the "new man" (or more properly "Mao's good soldiers") in China from the 1920s until the 1980s, with particular attention to the development of "thought reform" in Yan'an in the 1940s.
Chapter 3: Argument, Sources, Examples The fundamental reshaping of the Cuban character was a necessary condition of Cuba's rapid transition to communism after the revolution, and was a crucial precondition for the same.
Chapter 4: Argument, Sources, Examples The discourse of the "new man" was admired both by disaffected Westerners and by leaders in the Third World [sic], who "were seeking ideas and methods for developing their own countries and for nation building despite many obstacles" (190).
Conclusion: Argument, Sources, Examples The impulse to remake human nature is fundamentally human, neither fully whimsical, megalomaniac, pragmatic, or economic. Also, what is described here was a "world historical phenomenon" (223).
Critical assessment: I couldn't finish this book. The central idea--global communism in world historical analysis--is excellent, but Cheng offers essentially diachronic looks at the discourse of the new man in each country without enough actual analysis. He claims to be in Isaiah Berlin's camp in viewing these communist social engineering endeavors with extreme concern, but I'm not convinced. Particularly since Marx is and must be a central component in any endeavor to move past modernity, I think it's absolutely crucial to be absolutely clear about the terrible human cost of these social experiments--millions of lives ended and still more willfully destroyed--so that they not be repeated in the same fashion. Also, who still even calls it the Third World? and, I'm going to pass over the inherent gender bias of "the new man," since to some extent the gendered bias of the discourse vitiates itself in Cheng's examples of revolutionary new women. Also, I really think North Korea would have made a fascinating addition to the sample set, particularly in light of Cheng's claims about the influence of Confucianism on Chinese communism and Mao (note also that a minority of scholars believe that Kant was influenced directly by Chinese legalism).
Further reading: Donald J. Munro, The Conception of Man in Contemporary China; Rebecca E. Karl, Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth Century World
Meta notes: You have to be your own best (copy) editor, because there's no guarantee anyone else will do it for you.