The Chinese Revolution changed the face of the twentieth century, and the politics that issued from it—often referred to as "Maoism"—resonated with colonized and oppressed people from the 1970s down to the anticapitalist movements of today. But how did these politics first emerge? And what do they offer activists today, who seek to transform capitalist society at its very foundations?
Maoism and the Chinese Revolution offers the novice reader a sweeping overview of five decades of Maoist revolutionary history. It covers the early years of the Chinese Communist Party, through decades of guerrilla warfare and rapid industrialization, to the massive upheavals of the Cultural Revolution. It traces the development of Mao Zedong's military and political strategy, philosophy, and statecraft amid the growing contradictions of the Chinese revolutionary project. All the while, it maintains a perspective sympathetic to the everyday workers and peasants who lived under the party regime, and who in some moments stood poised to make the revolution anew.
From the ongoing "people's wars" in the Global South, to the radical lineages of many black, Latino, and Asian revolutionaries in the Global North, Maoist politics continue to resonate today. As a new generation of activists take to the streets, this book offers a critical review of our past in order to better transform the future.
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Yes, you can access Maoism and the Chinese Revolution by Elliott Liu in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & Chinese History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
1. Loren Goldner, “Notes Toward a Critique of Maoism,” http://breaktheirhaughtypower.org/notes-towards-a-critique-of-maoism.
I. Prologue: The First Chinese Revolution
1. Lucien Bianco, Origins of the Chinese Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), 54.
2. Ibid., 92–93.
3. Kay Ann Johnson, Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 30.
4. See Eric Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), chap. 3.
5. Harold Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution (London: Secker & Warburg, 1938), chap. 3. Also see Alexander Pantsov, The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution 1919–1927, and Arif Dirlik, The Origins of Chinese Communism and Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution for an overview of this period.
6. For an account of these years, see Simon Pirani’s The Russian Revolution in Retreat: 1920–1924 (New York: Routledge, 2008) and G.P. Maximoff’s The Guillotine at Work, vols. 1 and 2.
7. For a sweeping history of these developments, see Raya Dunayevskaya, Marxism and Freedom from 1776 until Today (New York: Bookman Associates, 1958). For a parallel critical history of the social democratic tradition, see Endnotes, “A History of Separation,” http://endnotes.org.uk/en/endnotes-a-history-of-separation.
8. The proper relationship between the communist party and the national bourgeoisie in anticolonial struggles remained a topic of intense debate within the Comintern, however. For an account of the failure of 1927 from dissident Comintern perspectives, see Leon Trotsky, Problems of the Chinese Revolution (New York: Pioneer, 1932), and M.N. Roy, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in China (Calcutta: Renaissance Publishers, 1946).
9. Bianco, Origins, 54–56.
10. Isaacs, Tragedy, chap. 10.
11. Ibid., chaps. 11–12.
12. Ibid., chap. 17. See Maurice Meisner’s Mao’s China and After, chap. 3, for an overview of this period.
13. Jane Degras, The Communist International: 1919–1943, Documents, vol. 2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), 529.
14. Isaacs, Tragedy, chap. 18.
15. Bianco, Origins, 64–70.
II. People’s War from the Countryside
1. Michael Sheng, “Mao, Stalin, and the Formation of the Anti-Japanese United Front: 1935–37,” China Quarterly 129 (1992): 149–70.
2. Lucien Bianco, Origins of the Chinese Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), 68.
3. James Harrison, The Long March to Power: A History of the Chinese Communist Party, 1921–72 (New York: Praeger, 1972), 319–21.
4. Ibid., 271.
5. Ibid., 311–13.
6. For an overview of this period, see William Hinton, Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), and Mark Selden, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).
7. Mao, “Current Problems of Tactics in the Anti-Japanese United Front,” March 1940, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_34.htm.
8. Bill Brugger, China: Liberation and Transformation, 1942–1962 (London: Croom Helm, 1981), 36.
9. Mao, “Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership,” June 1943, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_13.htm.
10. For an example of an attempt to overcome these shortcomings within a Maoist framework, see The Mass Line and the American Revolutionary Movement by Scott Harrison, available at http://www.massline.info.
11. Kay Ann Johnson, Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 67–68.
12. See Ting Ling, “Thoughts on 8 March (Women’s Day),” 1942, https://libcom.org/library/thoughts-8-march-women%E2%80%99s-day.
13. Johnson, Women, 73–74.
14. Paul Bailey, Women and Gender in Twentieth-Century China (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 98.
15. For an overview of this perspective, see Selma James, Sex, Race, and Class—The Perspective of Winning (Oakland: PM Press, 2012); Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero (Oakland: PM Press, 2012); Lise Vogel, Marxism and the Oppression of Women (Leiden: Brill, 2013); and Endnotes, “The Logic of Gender,” Endnotes 3 (2013), http://https://endnotes.org.uk/en/endnotes-the-logic-of-gender.
16. For an overview of the party’s gender politics in the Yenan period, see Judith Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).
17. Harrison, Long March to Power, 458.
18. See “Theses on the United Front” adopted by the Executive Committee of the Comintern, December 1921, https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/4th-congress/united-front.htm.
19. Michael Sheng, “Mao, Stalin, and the Formation of the Anti-Japanese United Front: 1935–37,” China Quarterly 129 (March 1992): 167–69.
20. See Mao, “On the Question of Political Power in the Anti-Japanese Base Areas,” March 1940, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_33.htm.
21. Harrison, Long March to Power, 318.
22. Mark Selden, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Cambri...
