Essays on Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong was a Marxist theorist, revolutionary, and, from 1949 to 1959, the first chairman of the People’s Republic of China.

Mao was the son of a prosperous peasant in Shaoshan, Hunan. He grew up in an environment in which education was valued only as training for keeping records and accounts. At 13 he was forced to begin working full-time on his family’s farm. He supported Chinese nationalism and had an anti-imperialist outlook early in his life, and was particularly influenced by the events of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and May Fourth Movement of 1919.

Maoism is the doctrine formulated by Mao Zedong and his associates. Mao’s particular strand of revolutionary theory took from the Marxist, Leninist, and Stalinist traditions but was also culturally tailored for the Chinese people. Maoism departed from other strands of Marxism in its understanding of peasantry: not as a class incapable of achieving political consciousness but as one with a dormant but tappable source of revolutionary energy.

Mao Zedong has a complex legacy, neither wholly good nor wholly bad. On the one hand, Mao’s revolution achieved China’s sovereignty, and his land reforms bequeathed land to a formerly landless peasantry. On the other hand, Mao ran an authoritarian government that quashed dissidence and caused years of terror, suffering, and famine for its people.

“To read too many books is harmful.”
“Women hold up half the sky.”
“Dont give a child a fish but show him how to fish”
“Firstly, do not fear hardship, and secondly, do not fear death.”

December 26, 1893

September 9, 1976 (aged 82)

Mao Zedong was a Marxist theorist, revolutionary, and, from 1949 to 1959, the first chairman of the People’s Republic of China.

Mao was the son of a prosperous peasant in Shaoshan, Hunan. He grew up in an environment in which education was valued only as training for keeping records and accounts. At 13 he was forced to begin working full-time on his family’s farm. He supported Chinese nationalism and had an anti-imperialist outlook early in his life, and was particularly influenced by the events of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and May Fourth Movement of 1919.

Maoism is the doctrine formulated by Mao Zedong and his associates. Mao’s particular strand of revolutionary theory took from the Marxist, Leninist, and Stalinist traditions but was also culturally tailored for the Chinese people. Maoism departed from other strands of Marxism in its understanding of peasantry: not as a class incapable of achieving political consciousness but as one with a dormant but tappable source of revolutionary energy.

Mao Zedong has a complex legacy, neither wholly good nor wholly bad. On the one hand, Mao’s revolution achieved China’s sovereignty, and his land reforms bequeathed land to a formerly landless peasantry. On the other hand, Mao ran an authoritarian government that quashed dissidence and caused years of terror, suffering, and famine for its people.

“To read too many books is harmful.”
“Women hold up half the sky.”
“Dont give a child a fish but show him how to fish”
“Firstly, do not fear hardship, and secondly, do not fear death.”