A Critical Introduction to Mao

"I teach Chinese history at Birkbeck College at the University of London, and this is a great book to teach with, because it takes in such a diversity of approaches and perspectives, from a range of top scholars. The essays also offer an entry point into individual scholars’ longer work. For example one essay by a German scholar, Daniel Leese, is an excellent introduction to his full-length book on the Mao cult. The contributions are varied in their subject matter, so they all provide a valuable, distinct perspective on the vast complexities of Mao’s life and ideas, but I found Delia Davin’s piece on Mao and women particularly helpful; as is well known, Mao was extremely contradictory in his statements and his behaviour towards women. His own womanizing fell very far short of his statements of gender equality, and Davin’s essay thoroughly explores that paradox. And an essay by Michael Schoenhals analyses Mao through fragmentary episodes and commentaries. It illuminates in truly eye-opening fashion how deeply unconventional and contradictory an individual Mao was. There are major elements of Maoism that spring from earlier guises of Communism, from Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism. Although Mao had personal quarrels with Stalin, he also had a huge respect for the Stalinist political legacy. In a way, that was one of the significant drivers of the Cultural Revolution: Mao felt that the Soviet Union under Krushchev was turning away from Stalinism, and it was up to China to continue this legacy that Mao was so attached to. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Yet Maoism distinguishes itself in various ways from earlier forms of Marxist thought. As an ideology born in China, Maoism gave center stage to a non-Western, anti-colonial agenda. Mao declared to radicals and revolutionaries in developing countries that Russian-style Communism should be adapted to local national conditions. He also told revolutionaries to take their struggles out of the cities and deep into the countryside. Mao was a passionate advocate of the doctrine of voluntarism, which holds that by sheer audacity of belief the Chinese could transform their country; revolutionary zeal, he preached, was more important than economic strength or weaponry (though, paradoxically, he was very eager to acquire the atomic bomb). Like Lenin and Stalin, he was determined to build a militarised, one-Party state that worshipped its supreme leader, but he also, especially in his last decade, championed anarchic insubordination. As he declared during the early years of the Cultural Revolution: “It’s right to rebel.” Bear in mind, however, that Maoism across its 80-year history frequently defies tidy definitions. It is a set of very contradictory, often unstable ideas, and over the decades it has meant many different things at different points in time, all around the world. In Vietnam and Cambodia, it stood for militarized party-building; in Western Europe, it stood for counter-culture rebellion; in Peru, it inspired a tiny band of under-equipped ideologues to challenge the government and army."