Publisher: Vintage, 2019 (First)
ISBN: 9780099581857
Pages: 606
The establishment of a socialist state in the Soviet Union in 1917 sidestepped some lines in the theoretical recipe that Marxism had proclaimed for a country’s journey to socialism. Old Russia was not an industrial giant like Britain where Marxism had cut its teeth. Hoisting of a communist regime in China was an even larger aberration from theory since China was a feudal state and the sword that brought victory for the Communists was lowly peasants from the countryside. Mao Zedong coordinated the military effort and anchored the new movement on solid theoretical foundations. Mao’s thought thus acquired a practical legitimacy which even Marx could not claim. Maoism ruled the roost in China and was successfully exported to unstable regions of the world where it triggered civil war and insurrection in its bid to capture state power. Mao died in 1976 and the latter Chinese strongmen purged his economic ideas from the country. The growth of China has been unparalleled thereafter, but with affluence came back grateful remembrance of Mao as the helmsman of the country in its perilous journey through tough times. Maoism is a potent mix of party-building discipline, anti-colonial rebellion and continuous revolution grafted onto the secular religion of Soviet Marxism. It turned a fractious, failing empire into a defiant global power. Julia Lovell is a scholar and prize-winning author and translator on China.
Autocratic ideologies always yearn to obtain a firm footing on the intellectual soil of their opponents by cashing in on their liberal ideas of freedom of expression. Mao and his party were glorified in the skillfully crafted book ‘Red Star over China’, written by the American author Edgar Snow. Lovell describes the strict censoring of the manuscript by Mao’s accomplices. After Snow had completed his English language transcript of his conversation with Mao, it would then be translated back into Chinese for Mao to inspect. He might revise some portions which will then be re-translated into English for public consumption. Moreover, Snow only saw what his communist handlers wanted him to see. He was so minutely guided that he failed to meet a single, uncongenial individual in the communist state in Yanan. Even after the founding of the People’s Republic, Snow was engaged in intensely regulated visits to China. He refuted reports of a famine that we now know killed tens of millions. Establishment and consolidation of the PRC coincided with a global upsurge in decolonization across the world. Mao presented his country as the global headquarters of anti-imperialism.
This book gives a comprehensive coverage of the ways and means through which China exported its homegrown Maoist revolution all over the world. But they did not anchor too much on ideological rectitude. China's own national self-interest or convenience always trumps revolutionary theory when it came to supporting armed insurrections abroad. Political violence supported by China erupted in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Chile, India and Nepal. These are narrated in detail. In the case of Africa, as de-colonization dawned, a host of new states were searching for political and economic models to fast track them into becoming modernized nations. As the years went by, China's focus on Africa also changed. Its presence in Africa today is focused on safe economic returns and political stability rather than on the kind of revolutionary upsurge that Mao cherished. The worst of Chinese revolutions abroad came about in Cambodia in the form of Khmer Rouge. It blatantly imposed slave labour on the ordinary people, with an ambition to turn the Khmers into rice- producing machines who consume no fuel and not too much rice. They abolished all currency and salary distinctions as well as killing millions of its own citizens. They forced people into collective communities like herds of cattle. With the creation of mess halls in such groups, they even abolished family dining in collective farms.
The author offers a clear argument on how the countercultural currents in western nations were so influenced by Maoism. In the 1960s, Soviet communism stood exposed and colorless with Khruzhchev’s disclosure of Stalinist terror. It had also fallen out of favour due to its repression of protests for democratic reforms in Eastern Europe and ossified bureaucracy. The chaos of Maoism appealed to the youth and Black activists of America. They showed little inclination to subject China to the same excoriating criticism applied to their own societies. Unlike in other countries, Lovell glorifies Maoist violence in India. She finds a prominent place to rebel voices like Arundhati Roy who depicts the Maoists as good-hearted, idealistic rebels with beautiful smiles, who laugh a lot and love poetry!
In a way, Mao’s death at the senile age of 83 in 1976 cleared China's unhurdled path to prosperity. Deng Xiaoping, who succeeded Mao to power, revoked his mentor’s theoretical injunctions one by one. In this de-Maoification of China, communes were dissolved, the sale of the Little Red Book was banned and all extant volumes pulped. To Deng, it was irrelevant whether the economic means were capitalist or socialist, provided that the political end of preserving party rule was achieved. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long abandoned the utopian turmoil of Maoism in favour of an authoritarian capitalism that prizes prosperity and stability. With the advent of XI Jinping however, Mao is being rehabilitated in appearances. He re-infused Maoist strategies into China’s national public culture which readily found a receptive audience. People claim to have observed therapeutic properties of Maoist anthems and miracles like prisoners being cured of their criminality by singing ‘read songs’.
This book also examines the reasons for the widespread popularity of Maoism, especially its chaotic Cultural Revolution, to the Western youth and oppressed sections of the society. As usual, rhetoric and individual practice varied widely. Mao famously declared that women can hold up half the sky, but continued his petty womanizing. When the need arose, the party even relied on narcotics to boost up their position. In the 1940s opium trade rescued the Communists from their trade deficit and was generating 40 per cent of the state’s budget. Mao shunned any trace of individuality among his cadres who looked like automatons coming out from the same mould. They were subjected to brainwashing by psychological moves and physical torture. Foreign journalists who visited Yanan in 1945 were surprised at the uniformity of thought among the common folk. The same question asked to twenty or thirty people elicited the same response. Even on questions about love, there seemed to be a point of view that has been decided by meetings.
The parting of ways between Soviet and Chinese communism served to cause a rift in the global socialist movement that might have contributed substantially to the eventual collapse of communism in the 1990s. Maoism essentially differed from Soviet communism in its veneration of the peasantry as a revolutionary force and its inclination to anarchic rebellion against authority. It sought to realize rebellion through state capture and claimed itself as an alternate model to the Soviet one which was too European for the Third World's taste. This huge book analyses Maoism’s ambivalent history and enduring appeal to power-hungry dreamers and dispossessed rebels all over the world.
The size of the book taxes the readers in many ways. Its wide coverage thereby nets a lot of subjects with characteristic lack of depth. At no point do the text raise above the level of journalism. A lot of monochrome plates are included but they are thoroughly ineffective.
The book is recommended only to serious readers of Maoism.
Rating: 2 Star
Autocratic ideologies always yearn to obtain a firm footing on the intellectual soil of their opponents by cashing in on their liberal ideas of freedom of expression. Mao and his party were glorified in the skillfully crafted book ‘Red Star over China’, written by the American author Edgar Snow. Lovell describes the strict censoring of the manuscript by Mao’s accomplices. After Snow had completed his English language transcript of his conversation with Mao, it would then be translated back into Chinese for Mao to inspect. He might revise some portions which will then be re-translated into English for public consumption. Moreover, Snow only saw what his communist handlers wanted him to see. He was so minutely guided that he failed to meet a single, uncongenial individual in the communist state in Yanan. Even after the founding of the People’s Republic, Snow was engaged in intensely regulated visits to China. He refuted reports of a famine that we now know killed tens of millions. Establishment and consolidation of the PRC coincided with a global upsurge in decolonization across the world. Mao presented his country as the global headquarters of anti-imperialism.
This book gives a comprehensive coverage of the ways and means through which China exported its homegrown Maoist revolution all over the world. But they did not anchor too much on ideological rectitude. China's own national self-interest or convenience always trumps revolutionary theory when it came to supporting armed insurrections abroad. Political violence supported by China erupted in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Chile, India and Nepal. These are narrated in detail. In the case of Africa, as de-colonization dawned, a host of new states were searching for political and economic models to fast track them into becoming modernized nations. As the years went by, China's focus on Africa also changed. Its presence in Africa today is focused on safe economic returns and political stability rather than on the kind of revolutionary upsurge that Mao cherished. The worst of Chinese revolutions abroad came about in Cambodia in the form of Khmer Rouge. It blatantly imposed slave labour on the ordinary people, with an ambition to turn the Khmers into rice- producing machines who consume no fuel and not too much rice. They abolished all currency and salary distinctions as well as killing millions of its own citizens. They forced people into collective communities like herds of cattle. With the creation of mess halls in such groups, they even abolished family dining in collective farms.
The author offers a clear argument on how the countercultural currents in western nations were so influenced by Maoism. In the 1960s, Soviet communism stood exposed and colorless with Khruzhchev’s disclosure of Stalinist terror. It had also fallen out of favour due to its repression of protests for democratic reforms in Eastern Europe and ossified bureaucracy. The chaos of Maoism appealed to the youth and Black activists of America. They showed little inclination to subject China to the same excoriating criticism applied to their own societies. Unlike in other countries, Lovell glorifies Maoist violence in India. She finds a prominent place to rebel voices like Arundhati Roy who depicts the Maoists as good-hearted, idealistic rebels with beautiful smiles, who laugh a lot and love poetry!
In a way, Mao’s death at the senile age of 83 in 1976 cleared China's unhurdled path to prosperity. Deng Xiaoping, who succeeded Mao to power, revoked his mentor’s theoretical injunctions one by one. In this de-Maoification of China, communes were dissolved, the sale of the Little Red Book was banned and all extant volumes pulped. To Deng, it was irrelevant whether the economic means were capitalist or socialist, provided that the political end of preserving party rule was achieved. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long abandoned the utopian turmoil of Maoism in favour of an authoritarian capitalism that prizes prosperity and stability. With the advent of XI Jinping however, Mao is being rehabilitated in appearances. He re-infused Maoist strategies into China’s national public culture which readily found a receptive audience. People claim to have observed therapeutic properties of Maoist anthems and miracles like prisoners being cured of their criminality by singing ‘read songs’.
This book also examines the reasons for the widespread popularity of Maoism, especially its chaotic Cultural Revolution, to the Western youth and oppressed sections of the society. As usual, rhetoric and individual practice varied widely. Mao famously declared that women can hold up half the sky, but continued his petty womanizing. When the need arose, the party even relied on narcotics to boost up their position. In the 1940s opium trade rescued the Communists from their trade deficit and was generating 40 per cent of the state’s budget. Mao shunned any trace of individuality among his cadres who looked like automatons coming out from the same mould. They were subjected to brainwashing by psychological moves and physical torture. Foreign journalists who visited Yanan in 1945 were surprised at the uniformity of thought among the common folk. The same question asked to twenty or thirty people elicited the same response. Even on questions about love, there seemed to be a point of view that has been decided by meetings.
The parting of ways between Soviet and Chinese communism served to cause a rift in the global socialist movement that might have contributed substantially to the eventual collapse of communism in the 1990s. Maoism essentially differed from Soviet communism in its veneration of the peasantry as a revolutionary force and its inclination to anarchic rebellion against authority. It sought to realize rebellion through state capture and claimed itself as an alternate model to the Soviet one which was too European for the Third World's taste. This huge book analyses Maoism’s ambivalent history and enduring appeal to power-hungry dreamers and dispossessed rebels all over the world.
The size of the book taxes the readers in many ways. Its wide coverage thereby nets a lot of subjects with characteristic lack of depth. At no point do the text raise above the level of journalism. A lot of monochrome plates are included but they are thoroughly ineffective.
The book is recommended only to serious readers of Maoism.
Rating: 2 Star
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