Reviews for Rethinking Mao: Explorations in Mao Zedong's Thought

The average rating for Rethinking Mao: Explorations in Mao Zedong's Thought based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-07-06 00:00:00 Adam Davidson Decent book riddled with contradictions. This is a book from a liberal who thinks he has a very firm grasp of Marxism, and indeed, it has to be admitted, his understanding is ahead of the many economistic revisionists still running around (in fact if social media were a genuine medium to measure such things, you'd think they are getting more numerous). The author defends Mao as a genuine Marxist who stayed true to Marxism until the end and instead of becoming more utopian (as is often claimed, based on a misunderstanding of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) as some attempt to quickly get to communism) he actually became more realistic, expecting the transitional period of socialism to communism to last a whole historical epoch, lasting perhaps hundreds or even 1000 years. He also has an insightful analysis of Mao's developing conceptualization and refinement of the dialectics between base and superstructure and how the superstructure can become more important than the base at certain historical times. Even his lengthy discussion of the different interpretations and their polemics is not uninteresting, though likely too much for most non-specialist readers. The contradictions come into play when the author refers to anti-communist arguments by Popper, for example, in between two sections where he disproves these very arguments, seemingly unaware of this. Another example is his use of the concept of economism, which has a specific meaning in Marxism, and which he uses in this very meaning, while also using it to refer disparagingly to Marxism in general. Yet another contradiction is the author referring to a whole barrage of books on the economic development of Maoist China all proving the it was a roaring success throughout (excluding the period of the Great Leap where natural disasters lead to great setbacks, but which also laid the basis for such natural disasters never threatening China again by constructing enormous irrigation projects all over the country and establishing the communes), and then talking about the GPCR as if it set the economy back by decades (when in reality it started industrialization for good and laid the basis for the later development, when the capitalist counter-revolution won and claimed these successes while spreading the lie of the disaster that supposedly was the GPCR). Despite its shortcomings, this is still an insightful book, probably more so to liberal and reactionary readers than Marxists. But revolutionary Marxists, too, can gain from it.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-04-22 00:00:00 John Fremont Seemed to be a very rudimentary biased account. Very little real information.