Who is Mao Tse Tung

February 2025 Forums Socialist Standard Feedback Who is Mao Tse Tung

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  • #256536
    Citizenoftheworld
    Participant

    This article is very simplistic about Mao Tse Tung thought. The five volume of the collected works of Mao Tse Tung is more ample than the quotations( The so called Red book )

    The main conception of Maoism is the The Three World theory, and the influence of Mao was partially vanished after the elimination of the Gangs of four, some Maoists call it the gangs of five because they included Mao too.

    Many hardcore Maoists have rejected the Three world theory, but a deep reading of his collected works show the connection between this theory and Mao Tse Tung thought, which was also pretty well described by the Albanian leadership and in the collected works of Enver Hoxha, the problem is that the implementation of that theory created the alliance with several reactionary governments, but that was also done by the soviets and Stalin and the Trotskyists

    Peking Review shows more about Maoism than the quotations, and in our time it is very difficult to find the works of Mao,

    The Institute of Marx and Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao was completely eliminated, and thousands of pamphlets were sold at a very cheap price around the whole world.

    The Ethnological notebooks of Marx do reflect the backward condition of Asia and the “third world” ( in the traditional term ) and feudalism is an European phenomenon, and probably it only existed in Japan, the soviet institute did not dig too much in this particular writings due to the similarity of their system and the asiatic mode of production ( Asiatic despotic mode of production )

    Probably, Enver Hoxha made a much better description of Maoism, despite of his defense that he made to Leninism

    50 Years Ago – Who is Mao Tse-Tung?

    #256540
    ALB
    Keymaster
    #256541
    Citizenoftheworld
    Participant

    I had read that article but it does not cover everything about the so called Mao Tse Tung thought. This book written by a Leninist known as Enver Hoxha cover more about Mao Tse Tung. We must read both sides, the red book of quotations of Mao is not enough, his five volume of collected works include more, it is like just reading one or two pamphlets of Lenin, even more, most Leninists have not read Lenin either

    https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch6.htm

    https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-5/red-dawn.htm

    The three world theory was developed by Mao Tse Tung and it is part of the so called Mao Tse Tung thought and it was the foundation of several Maoist parties around the world and members had to study that theory, in the same way that What is to be donde was the foundation of most Leninist party

    #256544
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    From what I remember from reading Mao’s writings, they are almost completely about peasant guerrilla strategy.

    The myth of Chinese “feudalism” was made gospel by the Maoists, and I believed it myself.

    Mao knew very little about Chinese history. He was the heir of the peasant T’aip’ing movement of the 1850s, which he was exhilarated by, with all its savagery, intolerance and fratricide.

    Having no real grasp of history beyond that, he merely adopted for China the European trajectory of social stages presented by Marx, and assumed Imperial China to be “feudal.” He also created a scenario in which chattel slavery, as in ancient Europe, preceded the first Emperor (Mao’s hero) who was supposed to have toppled it and “set up” feudalism.

    In fact, Chinese feudalism died out by the time of the first Emperor, and Chinese society never had chattel slavery as its basis, but only in a minor way, like the Celts.

    #256545
    Citizenoftheworld
    Participant

    https://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/china/mao_guerrilla_warfare.pdf

    https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/index.htm

    That is volume no, 5 which some of his military writings. He recognized that state capitalism existed in China

    The whole Chinese revolution was a peasant revolution, and the main objective of that process was toward a land reform like the Bolsheviks and most third world peasant revolution including the Mexican Zapatas revolution, and the cuban revolution.

    Guerrilla warfare is the way to take control of the state and the economic base, like Castroism and Guevaraism, Ernesto Che Guevara was a Maoist who advocated for a society without monetary system.

    Maoism is chinese peasant nationalism

    Feudalism never existed in China, or Asia, it only existed in Japan but it was also different to European feudalism, China was based on the Asiatic despotic mode of production, similar to Russia state capitalism

    Enver Hoxha called Mao and Maoism the new Chinese Confucius, There is not any Marxist phraseology on Maoism which is different to Lenin, and Stalin, Trotsky permanent revolution could have been applied to China too,

    Maoism ramifications is more than Mao Red book, and the Three World Theory is the culmination of Mao Tse Tung thought which was an anti marxist theory propagated as a Marxist conception and negated by the supporters of the gangs of five and they were saying that they overthrown by a coup

    Maoism was very popular in Latin America because it is third world theory and some organization rejected Castroism in order to adopt Maoism, when they applied the third word theory to Chile and others dictatorship there was a split and Albania took a big chunk of the Maoist movement.

    One benefits of the Chinese revolution was the creation of the Institute of foreign language which allows them to publish and propagate the works of Marx and Engels and the printing was very affordable, and China books and periodical was their main distributor

    #256547
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    Feudalism existed before Ch’in Shih Huang, when “China” was just a collection of petty kingdoms in the north. Confucius was feudalism’s spokesman. He was later adopted as symbol of social order after the brief rule of the Ch’in, when he, Confucius, was posthumously raised to honour.

    The Maoists declared against Confucius and for the tyrannical Ch’in.

    https://www.britannica.com/place/China/The-Zhou-feudal-system

    • This reply was modified 6 days, 5 hours ago by Thomas_More.
    #256554
    Citizenoftheworld
    Participant

    The Maoists can write and say whatever they want, they are all wrong.

    The asiatic mode of production was described by Marx in this notebooks. The Institute of Marxism-Leninism of Moscow did not dig into them because they describe the same society that they were defending in the Soviet Union and around the whole world

    https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/ethnographical-notebooks/notebooks.pdf

    #256556
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    I am not denying it. But feudalism existed prior to Imperial consolidation in the third century B.C.E.

    #256558
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    Maoists again:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08c3vrx

    On BBC 4 tonight.

    There was the American one too: “Workers Democratic Party” or some such anti-worker and anti-democratic cult.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Workers_Party

    Maoism tends to produce cults. The Khmer Rouge are the most extreme example in recent decades. The 19th century T’aip’ings had similar characteristics, and Mao idolised them.

    #256563
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    The Holy Communist 🥭 mango.😝

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mango_cult#:~:text=On%20August%205%2C%201968%2C%20the,workers%20stationed%20at%20Tsinghua%20University.

    ” One dentist from Fulin, Dr. Han Guangdi, saw the mango and said it was nothing special and looked just like sweet potato. He was put on trial for malicious slander, found guilty, paraded publicly throughout the town, and then executed with one shot to the head.”

    #256591
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    AI Google:

    Mao and homosexuality:

    ” Homosexual people were largely invisible and persecuted during the Mao era in China (1949-1976).
    Persecution
    Homosexuals were considered “disgraceful” and “undesirable”
    They were subjected to electric shock therapy and other attempts to change their sexual orientation
    They were arrested, imprisoned, and some lost their jobs for life
    They were subjected to varying forms of moral and often extra-legal sanctions
    Government policy
    The official media rarely discussed homosexuality from the 1950s to the 1970s
    It was believed that the only legitimate sexual intercourse was between a man and a woman within government-sanctioned marriage
    Mao Zedong reportedly believed in the sexual castration of “sexual deviants” ”

    This too was Mao’s T’aip’ing legacy. The T’aip’ings were the only pre-Mao regime in China to kill and victimise homosexuals.

    • This reply was modified 3 days, 4 hours ago by Thomas_More.
    #256611

    A reader wrote to the CPGB-ML asking, on the basis of this 50 Years Ago item:

    “I wonder if you could help me fathom out what Chairman Mao meant, when he wrote the following:
    ‘Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China’s 600 million people is that they are ‘poor and blank’. This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing’
    &
    ‘To make China rich and strong needs several decades of intense effort, which will include, among other things, the effort to practise strict economy and combat waste ie, the policy of building up our country through diligence and frugality’
    The later sounds like something a capitalist politician would say. But surely he can’t have been happy that people were poor, to hard work hard and received little material reward for their labours.”

    They got the following reply:

    “You are very correct that comrade Mao wasn’t happy with poverty or hardship that had been enforced on the Chinese people through a century of European colonialism and later Japanese aggression.
    What was needed to eradicate that was to build up a strong system to meet the needs of the people and the industries to supply those needs. In short, changing property relations and increasing the means of production. Due to economic reasons (low productive base and lack of colonies) and socialist values (not willing to exploit their own people or other peoples ala the western building of capitalism) they by necessity had to rely on their own labour to accumulate the resources to better their living standards. This requires some curtailment of immediate consumption to better develop an increase in necessities later.
    With regards to the ‘poor and blank’; any lifting of oppression to a people that had suffered much oppression and endless famine would be accepted glady, and it was! This enabled the Communist party to steadily increase living standards for the vast majority of the the Chinese people. They would educate (honestly!) the need for waste reduction and being frugal because as the means of production were held collectively, the sooner the ability to produce more was achieved (which requires investment of some surplus labour that would ordinarily be comsumed) the better the entire peoples’ lot would get.
    And yes, capitalist politicians do advocate austerity and tightening belts for the ‘nation’. But their nation is led by the bourgois for the bourgois and we have seen clearly that the workers bear the cost of austerity while the capitalists claim the rewards. Compare China, who have made monumental strides in lessening poverty since their revolution, and here in Britain where aside from a short period after WW2, have seen nothing but lowering of living standards.
    Often appeals from leadership can appear to be the same on the surface but the key is to ask “which class do the leadership serve?” and “what is the purpose of that appeal”.
    That is how I understand it.
    Regards,
    J.
    CPGB-ML”

    Our reader commented that they “wondered, who today would seek to defend the biggest mass murderer in history? Well, who else but the CPGB-ML.”

    #256618
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    The famines were manufactured by Mao, and the CPC confiscated food on a massive scale, leaving millions to starve. Kang Sheng, Mao’s hatchet man, also presided over kill quotas each year for each province. The people were regularly culled, and local officials had to satisfy the quotas and make their reports.

    With leprosy rampant, lepers were rounded up and burned alive.

    #256619
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    AI Overview

    +2
    “Frank Dikötter is a historian who has written about the atrocities of Mao Zedong and the Communist Party of China. His work includes Mao’s Great Famine, which documents the famine that killed millions of people during the Great Leap Forward. Dikötter’s other books include The Tragedy of Liberation and The Cultural Revolution.
    Mao’s Great Famine
    Estimates that at least 45 million people died from starvation, overwork, and violence during the Great Leap Forward
    Documents how the party knew it was starving its people, but did nothing
    Shows how local communist cadres withheld food from people they disapproved of
    Accuses top party leaders of doing nothing to help
    Shows how the country exported food, economic aid, and loans while the famine raged
    Combines the experiences of ordinary people with the actions of those in power
    The Tragedy of Liberation
    Documents the impact of the Communist Revolution on the lives of ordinary people from 1945–1957.”

    • This reply was modified 2 days, 3 hours ago by Thomas_More.
    #256621
    Thomas_More
    Participant
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