Ethan, I am sending your note on to the youth list (in addition to mine - they cover somewhat different areas, but yours is certainly more informed and it would be a real pity to send rare information to just one person, when many might have similar questions).

David

<< Ben,

David asked me to jump in with my finely massaged analysis of Maoism since he essentially missed the whole game while it was breaking out in America, while I had front row seats.

Let me first plug Max Elbaum's book from Verso, REVOLUTION IN THE AIR, which goes into great detail about what Maoism represented in the 60s and 70s as an international phenomenon and a trajectory for the post-60s movement.

Mao was many things to many people. A world-class national leader and figurehead on the scale of Lenin and Stalin. A 'redeemer' of the Communist legacy from the 'revisionism' of the post-Stalin Soviets. A mass murderer whose crimes (and personality cult) surpassed Hitler's. A philosopher, poet and master popularizer whose political and military writings could inspire barely literate peasants and high school students around the world. A neo-emperor, who drew on the millenarian revolutionary egalitarian trends in Chinese culture, successfully unifying China, seizing Tibet, intervening in the Korean War, while holding the combined might of the West at bay.

Politically, the phenomenon of Maoism rose to the forefront during the Cultural Revolution in China in the mid-to-late 60s. "Mao Zedong Thought" emphasized a 'pure' anti-imperialism over the Soviet Communism's 'peaceful coexistence' diplomacy. Under Mao, China championed third world liberation wars and supported armed struggle a la Vietnam as the path to liberation from Western capital --until Beijing bloced with Washington against Moscow in the early 70s. Mao also advocated 'continuation of the class struggle under socialism' -- which meant launching mass campaigns that emphasized ideological purity as an alternative to the Soviets' race to out-develop the West.

Many people who were radicalized in the 60s came to embrace Maoism as the revolutionary rallying point of the age. It was popular in North America, Asia, Oceania, Africa and continental Europe. In Britain and Latin America, Trotskyism was more the thing.

Of course, Mao was quite a guy, but even he had to sometimes stand naked. There were other towering Communists in the history of pre- and post-revolution China, including Zhou Enlai, who both served Mao and attempted to head off his excesses; Zhu De, who rose from poverty to command the People's Liberation Army; Liu Shaoqi, Mao's more moderate and urban counterpart, who was the main target of the Cultural Revolution but whose legacy, arguably, outlived Mao's own; Deng Xiaoping, Mao's unchosen successor, who championed modernization in the spirit of Liu and Zhao; and Peng Dehuai, a popular military and party leader who tried unsuccessfully to head off Mao's break with the Soviet Union and challenged Mao's "triumph of the will" economic policies.

I list these names because Mao's ideas can only be understood in historical context. From the 1920s to the 70s, he was fighting enemies of his party and government in China and the West, and rivals for his power in China and in the world Communist movement. Yet the problem with most self-professed Maoists today, starting with the RCP and their teeny-weeny rival the MIM, is that they don't care about historical context. They see it as a distraction from keeping alive the spirit of their idol.

Of course, like Christianity, Stalin-era Marxism-Leninism or any other doctrine, Maoism can be used to argue for or against any position. In one decade he promoted unity with the class enemy. In another he tried to turn China upside down and called the atomic bomb a 'paper tiger' [not a real threat]. His political positions could zig and zag, depending on circumstance, a good thing but hard to make into a secular religion. WHich is why Maoism did not really outlive its central figure.

Anyway, Mao had been dead a few years before the Chinese attack on Vietnam, and no one can really say whether he would have approved it--it was Deng's doing. The Vietnamese view Mao as a chauvinist who had ambitions of bringing Vietnam under Chinese rule.

The RCP didn't start NION but they out-organized everybody else.

Twentieth century China is a fascinating historical subject, and there are a lot of juicy tomes from all political angles. I recommend you hit the used bookstores and do a little comparative shopping. As for Maoism, read Max Elbaum's book.

luck,

ethan