Are there any good, unbiased sources about the thought of Mao?
Everything I've read about him so far make him look like a dumbass who didn't understand Marx. I want something comprehensive which doesn't portray Mao as an ignoramous but as the genius he was.
I can't answer your question, but the fact that Maoism is the only major Communist ideology that is still internationally relevant today (google NPA and Naxalites) should tell you that Mao wasn't the idiot some people claim.
Benjamin Cooper
Am i getting baited?
Gabriel Johnson
You could try to, you know, read the man himself and judge for yourself if he understood Marx or not.
Dominic Gomez
Pick one. He literally is the closest to the Marx lower stage anybody has ever got (Outside of Catalonia) Lmao
I think what he means is that he wants something that will admit Mao's achievements instead of being explicit anti-Mao propaganda.
Grayson Clark
at least when it came to implementing policies and governing, he was a dumbass. during the great leap forward they didn't even know the agricultural capacity of the farms they were demanding quotas from, often mistook their own propaganda for fact, and didn't even plan for a decrease in agricultural production while shifting resources to industrial production. not to mention the stupid fucking sparrow thing.
Nicholas Ross
Pretty much the only good thing was establish food security thanks to improved irrigation in the first couple years, this was completely neutralized by the great leap forward.
Kevin Ward
OP here. For the record, I'm looking for stuff on Mao's specific ideology, i.e. what makes Mao's thought distinct from that of other Marxists, philosophical influences on Mao, etc.
Christian King
Mao clearly unified china, kicked out foreign intervention and implemented great initial programs that helped china immensely
then he shot himself in the foot because he got a head full of hot air from his success, pig iron resulted in the farmers not having enough tools to do farming, targetting sparrows resulted in too many pests, and the CR, while it did get rid of some reactionary elements like shamanism, resulted in alot of setbacks for China's technological projects.
Bentley Sanders
Do you support the argument Mao caused the fall of communism by splitting with the Soviets?
Justin Clark
it would have happened with how the USSR took a relaxed stance against america, which deeply angered Mao since China just fought a costly war for the DPRK
funnily enough this situation would be reversed when Deng came to power, and if anything it shows nobody is really at fault here, but rather it is simply the result of geopolitical interests.
Aiden Clark
I'll post pdfs
Aaron Jackson
...
Lincoln Green
This book is good.
Adam Ward
The cultural revolution was China's first real communist revolution. It's a shame that it failed to achieve its goals. Still I have hope for Xi.
Sebastian Brooks
why? Xi is a porky, fuck him
Asher Gonzalez
Why is that kind of shit is on leftypol. Have you even read Mao?
David Rogers
Have you even read Mao? Or you just regurgitate liberal talking points?
Levi Walker
Cultural Revolution was fucking grand. A shame it didn't go far enough.
Juan Barnes
NPA and Naxalites get fucked though
and MLism is way more relevant? look at Cuba and China
Adrian Bailey
Cuba is revisionist as hell.
Dylan Gutierrez
Both of you are edgy retards. I'm an ML and like most things Mao did, but the cultural revolution was anti-marxist and undialectial as fuck. First the concept of cultural revolution is ignores the whole superstructure and base thing, second it wasn't even about that but it about mao purging his enemies (he obviously failed miserably) through his personal army (because the red guard was basically that), fourth and worst fucking offense is that the red army wasn't made of workers but fucking students. Now tell me how a bunch of students high on ideology blocking an entire country infrastructure is a good idea. The Soviet Union dealt with past reactionary culture without all this bullshit and without destroying everything, problem is that it wasn't even mao real objective.
Brody Jenkins
Mao's enemies were all liberals. The goal of the cultural revolution was to purge the party of its bourg and anti-communist elements (both were holdovers from the revolution.)
Jackson Baker
Yeah, it failed and just caused damage to the workers. My main opposition is that he was dishonest about it and that he used students
Angel Russell
Who cares about students (let alone honesty) when the future of communism is at stake? Stop being an idealist. All things are allowed when working to eliminate the bourgeoisie.
Nolan Morris
This is exactly what you call a revolution: movement from the masses to destroy reactionary elements in society. "Bunch of students high on ideology" was the most progressive (and sufficiently numerous) force in China, it is only natural they would be the vanguard of change. How is a movement acting autonomously according to their understanding of Marxism and revolutionary fervor is Mao's personal army? Even if in some places they committed mistakes because of the poor understanding of theory and sometimes over-zealotry on a large scale it was in the right direction. It is because of their autonomy and lack of control they had to be removed. Perhaps if Mao focused on creating a smaller, but a more conscious movement it would have succeeded in purging the country of reactionary elements and restoration of capitalism wouldn't occur now.
Jackson Myers
Go away leftcom
Oliver Powell
Who cares about loyalty to "dialectics"?
Adam Wood
I'm not talking about his ideology user, I wouldn't trust the writings of a sitting head of state as far as I could throw them, I'm talking about his actual record irl.
Is there any truth to the idea Mao was a practicing Buddhist?
Isaiah Gomez
Red Star Over China by Edgar Snow.
Anthony Baker
That's like a Zig Forumsack asking for a unbiased source for Trump. Some people are just fucking disasters who fall into power and no amount of "well to be fair" will make them look good. Mao was a fucking moron and the last time China was communist was back in the fucking paleolithic.
Mao seemed to try pretty fucking hard despite being spooked by Chinese traditional mysticism, like abolishing ranks in the Chinese army during Korea and trying to use the Cultural Revolution to stop the bureaucratization of the Chinese Communist Party under elites. The problem is it took until the 1970s for him to realize that most of the people in China didn't actually think about what he wanted to accomplish and took objectives at face value like the Four Pests campaign killing all the sparrows instead of simply reducing their population and abandoning farming outright during the Great Leap Forward instead of trying to establish local and decentralized industrial production. He was a communist working with a society based in Confucian hierarchies of peasants that still saw their leaders as derivatives of the emperors.
The Gang of Four should have disposed of Mao in 1968, finished the Cultural Revolution without him, and ensured China go all the way to agricultural communism instead of obsessing over productive forces.
YOU DREAMED OF SCENES LIKE YOU READ OF IN MAGAZINE
Jose Gutierrez
Unironically this, the Gang of Four did nothing wrong. He may have had the foresight to realize that Deng and the roaders were planning on turning China into the capitalist mess it was, but when it came down to it he wasn't ready to fully allow the Cultural Revolution to reach course
Liam Thomas
this is an autist who doesnt' realize the way in which society's base material causes merge with rather than simply override the cultural and ideological forms of the actual society that goes on within. stop being vulgar
Gavin Morris
When reading Mao I tend to be thinking "wow how did this smart-as-fuck motherfucker make so many mistakes?". It's maddening.
Austin Miller
Some years ago (when I was moving towards leftism though not quite there yet) I got through about half of a biography called "Mao: The Real Story", which was at least partly a response to Jung Chang's polemic-disguised-as-biography. It's stated purpose is to present the facts about Mao for the reader to make conclusions rather than to guide them to one. It's quite dry but pretty comprehensive. I also remember coincidentally seeing something on the internet implying the author Pantsov is a leftist, but I can't find it now. Could have been another person with the same name.
Fanshen is supposedly very good, though it's about the land reform rather than Mao himself.