Maurice Meisner

Maurice Meisner
Meisner in 1989
Born	November 17, 1931 Detroit, MI
Died	January 23, 2012(2012-01-23)(aged 80) Madison, Wisconsin
Alma mater	Wayne State University(BA) University of Chicago(MA,PhD)
Employer	University of Wisconsin–Madison
Known for	Historian of modern China
Title	Harvey Goldberg Professor of History
Children	4

Maurice Jerome Meisner(November 17, 1931 – January 23, 2012) was an American sinologist. He was a historian of 20th century China and a professor at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison.His study of theChinese Communist Revolutionand thePeople's Republicwas in conjunction with his strong interest insocialistideology,Marxism,andMaoismin particular. He authored a number of books includingMao's China: A History of the People's Republic(and subsequent editions) which became a standard academic text in that area.

Maurice Meisner was born inDetroit,Michiganin 1931 to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. He had two marriages each lasting about 30 years, first to Lorraine Faxon Meisner and subsequently to Lynn Lubkeman. He had three children from the first marriage and one child from the second. He died at his home inMadison, Wisconsinin 2012.

Early years

Meisner grew up in Detroit during the austere years of theGreat DepressionandWorld War II.But by the time he reached adulthood during the post-war boom, Detroit was a thriving center of culture as well as the auto industry. He remained in Detroit, enrolling atWayne State University.An outstanding student, Meisner was admitted to a graduate program there after only two years of college.

However this was also the beginning of theCold Warand theRed Scarein the U.S., having serious repercussions on the personal lives of Maurice Meisner and his wife Lorraine. As part of theMcCarthy era investigations,Lorraine was subpoenaedbefore theHouse Un-American Activities Committee(HUAC) in 1952 in relation to her attendance at theWorld Festival of Youth and Studentsheld inEast Berlinthe previous year. Like most witnesses called before hearings of HUAC or theSenate Internal Security Subcommittee(SISS), Lorraine Meisner refused to testify to the body. Although this assertion of herFifth Amendmentrights had no direct legal consequences, David Henry, president of Wayne State University where she was also a student, saw fit to expel her from the university. Although seen as an unusually harsh move even at the time, other schools were reluctant to admit a student dismissed under such circumstances.

The Meisners moved toChicagoafter they had been accepted to study at theUniversity of Chicago,where they both would eventually receive doctorates. Maurice Meisner undertook to study Chinese history at a time when this would be considered an obscure choice, but where the emerging significance of China might be discerned in the wake of the1949 revolutionand role of China in theKorean War.This included studying theChinese languageto do research and travel in order to collaborate with the rather few China scholars of the time.

Meisner's doctoral dissertation was prepared under the Sovietologist Leonard Haimson and developed in further year of research at the East Asian Research Center at Harvard. It was later published by Harvard University Press. In it, Meisner studied the original contributions to Chinese revolutionary theory by the co-founder of theChinese Communist Party,Li Dazhaoto show that the adaptation of Marxism to China which had been attributed toMao Zedonghad actually been accomplished by Li.

Maurice Meisner was an early member of theCommittee of Concerned Asian Scholars(CCAS). In addition to opposing American participation in theVietnam War,the group also involved itself in demystifying China at a time in which "Red China" was regularly portrayed as a threat to America, arguably surpassing theSoviet Unionas a target of anti-communist sentiment toward the end of the 1960s. Meisner wrote for their publication, theBulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars,and at the time of his death in 2012 he was still listed on the advisory board of the journal.

Beginning with an article in the 1963The China Quarterly,he published articles in the leading journals in the field, includingAsian Survey,Current History,Journal of Asian Studies,andModern China,among others.

Main career

Meisner earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at theUniversity of Chicagoand was awarded fellowships atHarvard Universityand theCenter for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences(Stanford, California). In 1968 he left his first faculty position at theUniversity of Virginiato accept a professorship at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madisonwhere he would remain for the rest of his career. He took sabbaticals at theWoodrow Wilson Center(1980) and at theLondon School of Economics(1999).

Teaching at the University of Wisconsin

In 1968 the nation was in a state of apprehension and unrest given the continuing war in Vietnam and movements for the empowerment of minorities. This was the same year as theTet Offensivewhich became widely viewed as a psychological turning point in the Vietnam war and American public opinion, theassassination of Martin Luther Kingand its aftermath,anti-war protests and police violenceat theDemocratic National Conventionin Chicago, and election ofRichard Nixonas president. Protest activity on and off the university campuses was reaching a crescendo and Madison happened to be one of themost affected campuses,bolstered by its large student body which in large part came from outside of Wisconsin. Highlights included militant protests againstDow Chemicalwhich produced thenapalmused in Vietnam, demonstrations and student strike demanding aBlack Studiesdepartment at the university, a campus-wide strike bygraduate assistants,the nationwidestudent strikefollowing the 1970 U.S.invasion of Cambodia,and the 1970bombing of the Army Math Research Centeralso in protest of the war. Radical politics was in the air, bringing to the fore radical organizations and ideologies ranging fromanarchismto variousMarxistcurrents.

Thus Maurice Meisner began teaching the history of the Chinese Communist Revolution not only at the very time when revolutionary politics was being widely explored and debated, but where the specifics of the revolution seemed very relevant to many radicalizing youth who were hardly enthralled by the nominally Marxist pro-SovietCommunist Party(which threw its electoral support to theDemocratic Party). TheChinese Communist Party,in contrast, had denounced the Marxism of theSoviet Unionas "revisionist," and Maoist groups were prominent among the more militant factions involved in protest actions and ideological debate. Interest in Meisner's Chinese history course was greatly bolstered by this perception of an international revolutionary pole headquartered in China along with Meisner's sympathy with the socialist goals underlying the revolution. Thus the one-time niche field of Chinese history gave way to a wider politically motivated audience requiring a large lecture hall.

1968 was during theCultural Revolutionin China, which received much fanfare among Western radicals but about which little was actually known. Many Maoists in the West found inspiration in the (perceived) role of theRed Guards,just as the English version ofMao's Red Bookbecame widely toted as a revolutionary handbook. Competing Maoist groups in the U.S. (such as from thebreakup of SDS) and the West attached themselves to the legacy ofMao Zedongand the cultural revolution, propelling interest in the recent history of China, the subject of Meisner's continuing research. As various absurdities and abuses committed during the Cultural Revolution became known, reactions of Maoist factions ranged from soul-searching to denial. Of obvious interest was Meisner's related research, although this was at a time when visiting the People's Republic was still impossible (as were visits by Chinese individuals to the West). Despite the difficulty in obtaining objective information, his study of the period made it into the classroom and would be incorporated into his 1977 workMao's China: A History of the People's Republic.

Post-Mao China

By the late 1970s not only had the earlier wave of campus radicalism subsided, but definite changes were underway in China which were troubling, at best, to the remaining American Maoist currents and the so-calledNew Communist Movementwhich had emerged from the remnants of theNew Left.Fascination with the cultural revolution had benefited from popular perceptions and slogans at a time when direct contact with Chinese communists was sparse, but in the years followingRichard Nixon'sChina visitthat began to change. With the death of Mao and the defeat of theGang of Four,the political course of China was to rapidly change, whereas Western observers, both on the right and on the left, were often unable or unwilling to recognize the enormity of the transformation that had begun. This was just as Meisner's major workMao's Chinawas going to press, documenting the history and dynamics of the Chinese Communist Revolution up to that point.

A subsequent edition of that book published in 1985 included additional chapters addressing the aftermath of the power struggle, but which still saw themarket reformsinstituted byDeng Xiaopingas a tactical turn in the development of socialism. Following some years of China's accelerating economic and political evolution, however, Meisner's assessment of the entire period became more sober as he traced the rise of what he termed "bureaucratic capitalism," albeit under the official banner of building "socialism with Chinese characteristics."Indeed, he saw the economic transformations underway as having set the stage for the democracy movement of 1989. The curious evolution of socialist China towards capitalism, all the while maintainingCommunist Partyrule, was the subject of Meisner's 1996 workThe Deng Xiaoping Era: An Inquiry into the Fate of Chinese Socialism, 1978-1994.

Meisner was himself in Beijing in 1989 up until a week before thecrackdown on the democracy movement.His analysis of the protest movement contradicted both the official characterization of it as a "counterrevolutionary rebellion" and the Western media's inclination to depict any movement for greater democracy as welcoming of capitalism. Rather than simple concerns for greater democracy, the movement was propelled by a disgust of privilege attained by powerful bureaucrats which was seen as official corruption, and in fact a result of the market reforms. Meisner writes:

[Calls against] "Corruption" now conveyed a moral condemnation of the whole system of bureaucratic privilege and power.... But now that Communist leaders, high and low, were so deeply enmeshed in profiteering in the presumably "free" marketplace, they had gone well beyond the bounds of politico-ethical legitimacy in popular perceptions. The use of political power for private gain was viewed as unfair and unjust, and it inflamed slumbering resentments against bureaucratic privilege.

Harvey Goldberg

Further information:Harvey Goldberg

It was not only students and young people involved in the tumultuous social/political struggles permeating the campus during the 1960s and 70s. The issues rocking the campus naturally created divisions among academics, and most particularly those in history and the other the social sciences where the sorts of issues being played out on the streets were the very subject of academic instruction. In this context one can easily appreciate that Maurice Meisner would have connected to like-minded colleagues in the history department, resulting in a personal friendship with ProfessorHarvey Goldbergwhose study of social movements in modern Europe mirrored Meisner's similar study of contemporaryChina.Goldberg was very well known and became extremely popular among radical students who would pack his lecture hall as he delivered hismemorable orationswhich less often took the form of history lectures than as passionate political statements.

Their friendship endured well past the heyday of campus activism, with them spending considerable time together as Goldberg's health suffered toward the late 1980s. Struck by the death of his friend in 1987, Meisner was instrumental in establishing theHarvey Goldberg Center for the Study of Contemporary Historyto honor and remember the beloved professor. In the spirit of Harvey Goldberg, the center would go on to sponsor quite a number of speakers, conferences and symposia especially around issues of social concern, connecting the study of history and society with activismas well as maintaining an archive of Goldberg's work. Maurice Meisner assumed the title ofHarvey Goldberg Professor of Historyfor the remainder of his university career.

Towards the end of his life, in 2009, a conference was held in honor of Meisner's distinguished career entitled "Reflections on History and Contemporary Change in China Before and After Tiananmen."The four-day conference, co-sponsored by the Harvey Goldberg Center, included a number of Meisner's former students, now themselves noted scholars of Chinese history. Following that conference three of Meisner's former students undertook to author and edit a book entitledRadicalism, Revolution, and Reform in Modern China: Essays in Honor of Maurice Meisner.The authors presented Meisner with an early copy of the book honoring him in 2011, the year before he died.

Major works

• Li Ta-Chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism.Harvard East Asian Series, 27. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).
• with Rhoads Murphey, eds.The Mozartian Historian: Essays on the Works of Joseph R. Levenson.(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).ISBN0520028260.
• Mao's China: A History of the People's Republic(New York: Free Press, 1977; revised 2nd ed. 1986).ISBN0029208203.
  • Mao's China and After:A History of the People's Republic.(New York: Free Press, 3rd ed., 1999).ISBN0684856352.
• Marxism, Maoism, and Utopianism: Eight Essays.(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982).ISBN0299084205.
• The Deng Xiaoping Era: An Inquiry into the Fate of Chinese Socialism, 1978-1994.(New York: Hill and Wang, 1996).ISBN0809078155.
• Mao Zedong: A Political and Intellectual Portrait.(Cambridge; Malden, MA: Polity, 2007).ISBN9780745631066.

External links

• Meisner, Maurice (2007)The Place of Communism in Chinese History: Reflections on the Past and Future of the People's Republic of China,(27 pages) Macalester International: Vol. 18, Article 8.
• Meisner, Maurice (1999)The significance of the Chinese revolution in world historyWorking Paper, 1. (13 pages) Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.
• Obituary:Maurice Meisner, historian of modern China, dies at 80by Susannah Brooks, University of Wisconsin–Madison News
• Harvey Goldberg Center at University of Wisconsin History Department