Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung
Oct 3, 2016 12:08:04 GMT
Post by Deleted on Oct 3, 2016 12:08:04 GMT
This is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, which is commonly called “the little red book” in the Occident. It contains 267 quotations divided into 33 chapters. The first edition didn’t even have a red cover, but subsequent editions had a plastified red cover so that workers could take it out into their agricultural fields even if it was raining.
It was originally planned as a political manual for army personnel as an antidote to the problems of the Great Leap Forward. The soldiers were receiving horrifying letters from home concerning the famine and hardships caused by this disastrous plan, so the book was to boost morale and provide simple solutions for daily life.
Once the book was released to the general public, it became an unofficial obligation for the Chinese to carry a copy of it at all times, including small children and senile old people. 234 million copies were printed in 1966 and 370 million in 1967. In all, more than a billion copies were printed, and the national printing presses were for a time devoted exclusively to printing this one book instead of school textbooks or other such things. Many Chinese who were children back then say that school days were devoted to studying the book simply because there was nothing else to read. Many of them are still capable of quoting entire passages of the book.
People became so zealous about interpreting the book that it became a great source of conflict among various factions, and the army had to be called out to repress the anarchy and chaos that it was creating in political and trade union meetings. Any of us who knew some Maoists in the 1970’s and 80’s can confirm that even outside of China, people could fly into a rage over diverging interpretations.
The book began disappearing already in 1971, and the person who was behind the whole idea of the publication, Lin Piao, died in a mysterious plane crash in Mongolia after falling into disgrace. In 1979 the Quotations of Chairman Mao were completely withdrawn from circulation. 100 million copies were even destroyed.
Tourists in China still buy old copies for 3 or 4 euros, but the young Chinese know nothing about the book other than it has a red cover. It gets mentioned in about 2 sentences in Chinese textbooks in the chapter about the Cultural Revolution. It is only outside of China that there is still a cult following by a few extremist fringe groups.
If you read a few words of wisdom from Chairman Mao, you will quickly see that there is plenty of room for debate and interpretation. Not all of it is complete crap, but some it most definitely is… from our point of view.
The question of suppressing counterrevolutionaries is one of a struggle between us and the enemy, a contradiction between us and the enemy. Among the people, some see this question in a somewhat different light. Two kinds of persons hold views different from ours. Those with a Rightist way of thinking make no distinction between the enemy and us and take the enemy for our own people. They regard as friends the very persons whom the broad masses regard as enemies. Those with a "Left" way of thinking magnify contradictions between ourselves and the enemy to such an extent that they take certain contradictions among the people for contradictions with the enemy and regard as counter-revolutionary persons who are actually not counter-revolutionaries. Both these views are wrong. Neither can lead to the correct handling of the question of suppressing counter-revolutionaries or to a correct assessment of this work.
Anyone who sees only the bright side but not the difficulties cannot fight effectively for the accomplishment of the Party's tasks.
What is work? Work is struggle. There are difficulties and problems in those places for us to overcome and solve. We go there to work and struggle to overcome these difficulties. A good comrade is one who is more eager to go where the difficulties are greater.
In order to build a great socialist society it is of the utmost importance to arouse the broad masses of women to join in productive activity. Men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in production. Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole.
In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.
An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.
Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land. Different forms and styles in art should develop freely and different schools in science should contend freely. We think that it is harmful to the growth of art and science if administrative measures are used to impose one particular style of art or school of thought and to ban another. Questions of right and wrong in the arts and sciences should be settled through free discussion in artistic and scientific circles and through practical work in these fields. They should not be settled in summary fashion.
In the fight for complete liberation the oppressed people rely first of all on their own struggle and then, and only then, on international assistance. The people who have triumphed in their own revolution should help those still struggling for liberation. This is our internationalist duty.
We must never adopt an arrogant attitude of great-power chauvinism and become conceited because of the victory of our revolution and certain achievements in our construction. Every nation, big or small, has its strong and weak points.
We should go to the masses and learn from them, synthesize their experience into better, articulated principles and methods, then do propaganda among the masses, and call upon them to put these principles and methods into practice so as to solve their problems and help them achieve liberation and happiness.
Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor; it is people, not things that are decisive. The contest of strength is not only a contest of military and economic power, but also a contest of human power and morale. People necessarily wield military and economic power.
The atom bomb is a paper tiger that the U.S. reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't. Of course, the atom bomb is a weapon of mass slaughter, but the people decide the outcome of a war, not by one or two new types of weapon.
Our country and all the other socialist countries want peace; so do the peoples of all the countries of the world. The only ones who crave war and do not want peace are certain monopoly capitalist groups in a handful of imperialist countries that depend on aggression for their profits.
It was originally planned as a political manual for army personnel as an antidote to the problems of the Great Leap Forward. The soldiers were receiving horrifying letters from home concerning the famine and hardships caused by this disastrous plan, so the book was to boost morale and provide simple solutions for daily life.
Once the book was released to the general public, it became an unofficial obligation for the Chinese to carry a copy of it at all times, including small children and senile old people. 234 million copies were printed in 1966 and 370 million in 1967. In all, more than a billion copies were printed, and the national printing presses were for a time devoted exclusively to printing this one book instead of school textbooks or other such things. Many Chinese who were children back then say that school days were devoted to studying the book simply because there was nothing else to read. Many of them are still capable of quoting entire passages of the book.
People became so zealous about interpreting the book that it became a great source of conflict among various factions, and the army had to be called out to repress the anarchy and chaos that it was creating in political and trade union meetings. Any of us who knew some Maoists in the 1970’s and 80’s can confirm that even outside of China, people could fly into a rage over diverging interpretations.
The book began disappearing already in 1971, and the person who was behind the whole idea of the publication, Lin Piao, died in a mysterious plane crash in Mongolia after falling into disgrace. In 1979 the Quotations of Chairman Mao were completely withdrawn from circulation. 100 million copies were even destroyed.
Tourists in China still buy old copies for 3 or 4 euros, but the young Chinese know nothing about the book other than it has a red cover. It gets mentioned in about 2 sentences in Chinese textbooks in the chapter about the Cultural Revolution. It is only outside of China that there is still a cult following by a few extremist fringe groups.
If you read a few words of wisdom from Chairman Mao, you will quickly see that there is plenty of room for debate and interpretation. Not all of it is complete crap, but some it most definitely is… from our point of view.
The question of suppressing counterrevolutionaries is one of a struggle between us and the enemy, a contradiction between us and the enemy. Among the people, some see this question in a somewhat different light. Two kinds of persons hold views different from ours. Those with a Rightist way of thinking make no distinction between the enemy and us and take the enemy for our own people. They regard as friends the very persons whom the broad masses regard as enemies. Those with a "Left" way of thinking magnify contradictions between ourselves and the enemy to such an extent that they take certain contradictions among the people for contradictions with the enemy and regard as counter-revolutionary persons who are actually not counter-revolutionaries. Both these views are wrong. Neither can lead to the correct handling of the question of suppressing counter-revolutionaries or to a correct assessment of this work.
Anyone who sees only the bright side but not the difficulties cannot fight effectively for the accomplishment of the Party's tasks.
What is work? Work is struggle. There are difficulties and problems in those places for us to overcome and solve. We go there to work and struggle to overcome these difficulties. A good comrade is one who is more eager to go where the difficulties are greater.
In order to build a great socialist society it is of the utmost importance to arouse the broad masses of women to join in productive activity. Men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in production. Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole.
In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.
An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.
Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land. Different forms and styles in art should develop freely and different schools in science should contend freely. We think that it is harmful to the growth of art and science if administrative measures are used to impose one particular style of art or school of thought and to ban another. Questions of right and wrong in the arts and sciences should be settled through free discussion in artistic and scientific circles and through practical work in these fields. They should not be settled in summary fashion.
In the fight for complete liberation the oppressed people rely first of all on their own struggle and then, and only then, on international assistance. The people who have triumphed in their own revolution should help those still struggling for liberation. This is our internationalist duty.
We must never adopt an arrogant attitude of great-power chauvinism and become conceited because of the victory of our revolution and certain achievements in our construction. Every nation, big or small, has its strong and weak points.
We should go to the masses and learn from them, synthesize their experience into better, articulated principles and methods, then do propaganda among the masses, and call upon them to put these principles and methods into practice so as to solve their problems and help them achieve liberation and happiness.
Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor; it is people, not things that are decisive. The contest of strength is not only a contest of military and economic power, but also a contest of human power and morale. People necessarily wield military and economic power.
The atom bomb is a paper tiger that the U.S. reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't. Of course, the atom bomb is a weapon of mass slaughter, but the people decide the outcome of a war, not by one or two new types of weapon.
Our country and all the other socialist countries want peace; so do the peoples of all the countries of the world. The only ones who crave war and do not want peace are certain monopoly capitalist groups in a handful of imperialist countries that depend on aggression for their profits.