Ideology, Telos, and the 'Communist Vanguard' from Mao Zedong to Hu Jintao

摘要

This work discusses why Marxist vanguard parties require ideology in their struggle to gain and maintain political power. Despite being considered theoretically inconsistent with classical Marxism and western vernacular, [ chart etymologically how "ideology" came to China and proliferated during the Mao era as a positively framed term via, in all likelihood, Japanese renderings of Leninism. After discussing ideological challenges under Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, I explore whether Hu Jintao's scientific development and harmony concepts might be understood as ideological campaigns which—by synthesizing Maoist and Dengist approaches to ideology— effectively address what otherwise be referred to as the Party's telos problem, and thus resolve in part the threat to the Parry's vanguard claim.