Maoism: A Global History by Julia Lovell (PDF)

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*** WINNER OF THE 2019 CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2019SHORTLISTED FOR THE NAYEF AL-RODHAN PRIZE FOR GLOBAL UNDERSTANDINGSHORTLISTED FOR DEUTSCHER PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING***’Revelatory and instructive… [a] beautifully written and accessible book’ The TimesFor decades, the West has dismissed Maoism as an outdated historical and political phenomenon. Since the 1980s, China seems to have abandoned the utopian turmoil of Mao’s revolution in favour of authoritarian capitalism. But Mao and his ideas remain central to the People’s Republic and the legitimacy of its Communist government. With disagreements and conflicts between China and the West on the rise, the need to understand the political legacy of Mao is urgent and growing.The power and appeal of Maoism have extended far beyond China. Maoism was a crucial motor of the Cold War: it shaped the course of the Vietnam War (and the international youth rebellions that conflict triggered) and brought to power the murderous Khmer Rouge in Cambodia; it aided, and sometimes handed victory to, anti-colonial resistance movements in Africa; it inspired terrorism in Germany and Italy, and wars and insurgencies in Peru, India and Nepal, some of which are still with us today – more than forty years after the death of Mao.In this new history, Julia Lovell re-evaluates Maoism as both a Chinese and an international force, linking its evolution in China with its global legacy. It is a story that takes us from the tea plantations of north India to the sierras of the Andes, from Paris’s fifth arrondissement to the fields of Tanzania, from the rice paddies of Cambodia to the terraces of Brixton.Starting with the birth of Mao’s revolution in northwest China in the 1930s and concluding with its violent afterlives in South Asia and resurgence in the People’s Republic today, this is a landmark history of global Maoism.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is trash. Not scholarship, not a work of considered social or political history and certainly not the vital analysis of radical revolutionary movements that the author distinctly positions it as. This is a gossipy, poorly constructed and ideologically obtuse propaganda leaflet not for liberal democracy but a certain inaccurate conceptualization of such that does absolutely more harm than good.First and most importantly this is not a considered piece of political or sociological research. I admit to buying this book after its promotion in The New Yorker (I am not some crank at war with every work of scholarship that can be slapped with the dismissal of liberal shill) expecting a considered study of the formation, underpinnings and practical effects of Maoism as a political philosophy. The first full chapter is merely a list of salacious details about Mao’s personal behavior cribbed largely from a sensationalist book by his ex-physician. The author concludes Maoism never was a political philosophy at all. If one is going to conjecture that there is no actual political philosophy underlying forty years of violent armed struggle I would at least expect the analysis of something other than Mao’s admittedly awful treatment of his concubines and the thorough characterization of the man as merely a doddering fool with no political cohesion. Never has someone been portrayed as more tyrannical with less analysis of their methods of tyranny. I did not buy this text expecting a leftist manifesto but I certainly didn’t expect several hundred pages of smug, poorly-curated political gossip standing in for a serious analysis of global political forces during and after the cold war. That’s all this is, and it fails to be even a well-constructed piece of trite editorializing.Radical leftist (and rightist) political solutions cannot change society for the better, only democracy. This is the point the author drives home hard enough to make your teeth rattle. That’s all very commendable. While some information about repressiveness on the part of conservative state apparatuses is given it is merely to add zest to supposition and set-dressing conjecture about the theory of Maoism and its political effects on the world. Graphic brutalities of Maoist movements are expounded on from unreliable narrative sources (a great deal of information about the casualties and negative practices of revolutionary movements in this book is cribbed from CIA-aligned military sources) and an endless gossipy fascination with the unproductive character flaws of individual Maoists is repeatedly belabored. We learn that Edgar Snow, author of Red Star Over China, stowed away on an ocean liner and got a cabin boy fired, reducing the lad to penury. Booo hiss, bad Edgar Snow! Asides like this of the television-consumption habits of the Shining Path leader and who swam with who at the embassy pool take up an astounding amount of the wordcount. The utter barbaric brutality of multiple colonial regimes committing mass murder with famine and explicit military violence in most of the areas that were later susceptible to admittedly brutal Maoist violence is barely touched on. Multiple, documented CIA-backed operations to depose popularly-supported leftist regimes are not mentioned at all. Revolutionaries who died by the tens of thousands fighting against brutal US-backed regimes that undermined popular sovereignty and thus public trust of the democratic system (if it even existed) are always portrayed as duped by conniving intellectuals who ushered forth violent revolution because they were unserious about democratic principles.A Maoist revolutionary from Nepal who fought a horrifically brutal military while pregnant and later won elected office tells the author directly she cannot see women in Nepal having accomplished a fraction of what they now possess without the ferocity of the change ushered in from the civil war. They author then flatly states the former combatant “would have turned out fine regardless” due to her drive for self-improvement. This is beyond condescending liberal fell-good nonsense. This is toxic, banal racist finger-wagging at the desperation of people victimized by hundreds of years of a colonial system often perpetrated by the author’s native England. Single, professionally-dubious academic sources are sited as the sole alternative to wide public popularity for Maoist forces, most notably in the author’s discussion of the Naxalites in India.This isn’t CIA propaganda. It’s far more dangerous than that. I would have found a book realistically critical of the immense brutality inherent in the Maoist message while also serious about the desperation caused by ongoing western colonialism welcome. Other authors covering similar subjects have achieved it, most notably Patrick R. Keefe with Say Nothing. This is an ignorant and offensive promotion of a dysfunctional liberal alternative that is at best unserious and more often utterly ignorant of the fact that many stable western democracies are undermining democratic processes in other parts of the world and assisting the Saudis in waging genocide against the Houthis among countless other atrocities waved away as just the cost of doing business in a capitalist world.This book is dangerous. It has received a flurry of positive attention and was recommended in major liberal publications. It is going to be waved about by clean, well-meaning people who will cite its analysis of third-world Maoist eggheads stumbling into atrocities rushing to overthrow supposedly-false tyranny while their own governments right now starve, bomb and depose the governments of millions of people. We should all advocate for peace. But what is being advocated here is the false narrative of a democratic alternative that would have treated everyone from dispossessed non-whites in the US to Peruvian native people murdered in scores by the army of their democracy delivering prosperity if only we all embraced markets and voted. I can forgive an informed conjecture with which I disagree but this is hackneyed, smarmy, victim-blaming cheer-leading for an alternative I expect an educated person to see as just as flawed as the armed overthrow of society.The author should be ashamed, and there are far better works on leftist movements you could spend your time on. Emma Goldman’s essays on the Bolsheviks are far more affordable and worthy of your time.

⭐”Mao’s great talent lay in turning the Chinese people into slaves, while making them feel like they were the masters of the country … All the world’s dictators have studied Mao.”Julia Lovell’s Maoism: A Global History provides a comprehensive history of the origins and influence of Maoism. It has crossed cultural and language boundaries to be a worldwide phenomenon. Its guiding principle has been a utopian message of the liberation of the oppressed while ruthlessly silencing any dissent.Mao’s path to power began in earnest in 1934 with his assumption of the military leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). From this position, Mao was able to wrest political control of the CCP from his rivals. While Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists were fighting the Japanese, membership in the CCP increased “from 40,000 in 1937 to around 800,000 in 1940.”In 1938, Edgar Snow published Red Star Over China. Snow was an American living and writing in China. Mao granted Snow a series of interviews, and the CCP carefully vetted Snow’s manuscript. The resulting book was a glowing portrait of Chinese communism and Mao’s leadership. The book was an international bestseller. Outside of Mao’s writings, the book was the most influential source of global Maoism.Guerilla warfare was a crucial part of Mao’s military strategy in China and a part of global Maoism. In China, Mao used the approach to avoid direct engagement with Chiang Kai-shek. The strategy was exported to Vietnam and used there to defeat the French and later the Americans.The CCP also benefited from the obfuscation of Mao’s true intentions. In 1945, CCP representative Zhou Enlai convinced visiting Americans that “Mao wanted an American style democracy.”Once in power in China, Maoism took on a quasi-religious dimension. A visit to China became a spiritual pilgrimage for Maoists. The Little Red Book of quotations by Mao was described by the Chinese Minister of Defense Lin Biao as a “spiritual atom bomb of infinite power.” Between 1966 and 1971, “more than a billion” Little Red Books were printed “in dozens of languages.”With the onset of the Cultural Revolution in China, Maoism emerged as the radical ideology of choice. Mao condemned Khrushchev’s repudiation of Stalinism as “revisionism.” In contrast to Soviet dilution, Maoism championed the oppressed and opposed all injustice. Mao’s platitudes, such as “serve the people,” “power flows from the barrel of a gun,” and “revolution is not a dinner party” became popular in the radical West and elsewhere.With the death of Mao in 1976, the Cultural Revolution came to a close. Deng Xiaoping, who took power in 1978, emphasized Chinese economic development. However, Deng did not repudiate Maoism as a whole. Unlike the Soviets, who could denounce Stalin and fallback on an allegedly enlightened Lenin, China had no fallback. For better or worse, Mao was the face of the Chinese revolution.Deng’s leadership stance fostered evermore violent forms of neo-Maoism. In 1980, on Mao’s birthday, Peru’s Shining Path hung dead dogs from lampposts in Lima in protest of Deng’s perceived betrayal of global Maoism.Neo-Maoism remains a force in Chinese academia and government. From this perspective, Chinese internationalists are right-wing, and Maoists are the nationalist left. To some degree, the CCP tolerates neo-Maoism while suppressing democratic forms of dissent.

⭐Maoism is an intensely interesting subject. And I had high hopes of this book, especially as it had been reviewed positively by David Aaronovitch, a journalist I value. But I struggled and I am not entirely sure why. It is very comprehensive. It has plenty of examples and anecdotes. It is written with passion and energy.But …I ended too many chapters wondering what the point was. I got lost in the detail and endless flow of words. I wanted more analysis. The author is good at exploring the influences of Maosim in different revolutionary movements in the world but much weaker at placing the movement in context. I may have misunderstood, but an implication that ZANU/PF (Zimbabwe) was a Maoist success story is a nonsense. and her treatment of Nyerere shows little understanding of Nyerere’s thought and politics. I guess I would have liked to have seen much more discussion of maoism in the mosaic of marxist-leninist, social democratic and anarchic action in the sixties and seventies.

⭐This is an excellent book, and tells a fascinating story – of how an ideology dismissed or even ridiculed in the West (as the author points out the Beatles’s “Revolution” was a contemporary work of mockery when the Cultural Revolution was at its peak) shaped and is still shaping the world in which we live largely (though not exclusively) in negative ways.Maoism may be reduced to cult status in the west – though as the book notes it left its mark on struggles for feminism and race equality – but in what Mao called the Third World it still really matters, not least in China itself, the world’s second biggest economy and currently undergoing a revival of ‘soft’ Maoism as the ruling party looks for ways to bolster its legitimacy in a society where both wealth and inequality are growing.Those who have walked the path of Maoism and “people’s war” have generally led their societies into great agony – and the book does not shirk this: the chapter on Peru is deeply chilling – terrifying, even: I had dreams about it – and is a reminder that the distance between ‘humanity’ and ‘barbarism’ is one of millimetres. But the book avoids cold war cliches and attempts to explain why Maoism still appeals.Not everything is perfect – the Cultural Revolution is central to the Maoist experience and world view but is barely described (perhaps because ten volumes would never be enough to describe that madness) and we are told Tanzania followed a semi-Maoist path and it failed but an little bit more about how and why it failed would have been welcome.

⭐The most pressing thought which comes to mind in reflection upon this original and masterful work is why has no one previously attempted a global coverage of a powerful and influential ideology? Maoism may very well be the most enigmatic, yet dangerous ideology of the 20th Century, and probably the least understood. So, Julia Lovell is faced with two questions, firstly, what is Maoism? Secondly, what is Maoism’s global impact? The first question is a question this reader has struggled with for years, and never properly understood, perhaps because it is relatively simple, and Lovell explains it in simple terms. Maoism is much more a revolutionary ideology than a governing ideology. As a governing ideology, it appears incoherent and unattractive, as Mao himself, by his own admission, was no great Marxist theorist. However, as a Revolutionary, both in theory and practice, he was second to none. At its core is the notion that the revolution can begin in the countryside, that peasants and small townsfolk can rise up and surround the cities, and that the revolutionary army is like water, and hides among the people. Essentially, Maoism is the doctrine of people’s war. Secondly, what is the Global impact? The global impact is huge and far reaching, from Indonesia, to Cambodia, to Peru, to Nepal, to the Red Brigades of Italy and many more European revolutionaries, Maoism was the revolutionary ideology of the Avant Garde, the true spirit of rebellion. Of particular interest is the chapter concerning the Shining Path in Chile, and the Red Brigades in Italy. Interesting, but heavily overlooked episodes of world history. The book also deals with Mao’s governance in China, and his controversial legacy. Lovell, like many others, contends that Mao himself is a double-edged sword for China’s governing party, he is essential for their historical legitimacy, yet dangerous for their continued hold on power. The very spirit of rebellion that Mao embodies, and the more egalitarian form of socialism he represents, is both a source of legitimacy and a paradox for contemporary China. Mao is to be approached cautiously, as though his embalmed body itself emanates radiation. Lovell’s encyclopedia of Maoism isn’t just a study of history or ideology, it is a tour de force of world revolution, a journey into the very spirit of rebelliousness. It both informs and excites the reader and may very well inspire. The book, likes its subject matter, is hot material, and should be approached with caution.

⭐Who knew it could be possible to produce a history of Maoism that is beautifully and engagingly written? But that’s what this book has achieved.The author demonstrates very clearly how the complex multi-faceted nature of Maoism in China led to the creation of very different “Maoisms” in different parts of the world. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend reading the whole book cover to cover (it’s over 600 pages) but each of its chapters tells an important story, of how Maoism has been interpreted in different countries.The chapter on Maoism in the West shows how far the phenomenon deviated from what had actually been going on in China. But there is a curious gap in the book, given that the author is an academic at London University: it has very little to say about Britain. Presumably this is because British Maoism has for the most part avoided the romanticism and anarchist tendencies of “Maoism” in countries such as France and Germany, and instead principally just been a form of old-style Communism based in working class trade unionism. Less entertaining to read about perhaps, but nevertheless part of the history. Also it would have been interesting to see at least a mention of how the Cultural Revolution found a distant British echo in the “Orange Guards” within the Young Liberals in the mid-60s.A “global history” – but there’s still more to be said.

⭐An essential read, linking China’s past with it’s present. It does the job of taking Maoism seriously as a coherent political force –without putting over much weight on it’s Marxist ideology but a lot on violence, peasant revolution and force of will. Much of the stuff on Maoism in China is pretty familiar – but more context than usual – but the tour de force is its global impact, on the left in the West, on Africa, on the cold war in creating the domino theory. The chapters on India and Nepal particularly fresh. Well written, accessible, academic in rigour but judiciously sprinkled with anecdotes.

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